Levellers are one of the rare bands that can make me feel old and young at the same time, and never more so than with songs like “A Life Less Ordinary” and “The Cholera Well”, being released as a free downloadable tasters for the forthcoming full-length album Letters From The Underground.
Levellers make me feel old because there are few bands who can better sum up the vibe and attitude of the early nineties as I experienced it, and the nineties already seem a long time gone.
But Levellers make me feel young by reminding me of the untarnished idealism and lust for change I had back then; like every fourteen year old ever, I though the world was going to be rebuilt as a better place overnight.
The revolution never happened, of course, but Levellers don’t care. The revolution they sang was always a personal one first, and that tradition is carried on with “A Life Less Ordinary”, which could easily have been a forgotten tune from Levellers‘ breakthrough album Levelling The Land.
“… a life less ordinary / that’s the one I chose …”
Driven by punk guitars and bass but given a folky stomp by lanky Jon’s screaming fiddle and the sing-along choruses, “A Life Less Ordinary” returns to the frequent Levellers lyrical theme of contrasting the leftfield or anti-consumerist lifestyle with the mainstream.
“The Cholera Well” is more explicitly folky, with a frantic fiddle scratch providing impetus to the repeating vocal hook of the title. This is Levellers in full-bore protest-song satire mode, a scathing indictment of government and corporate interference in third world countries that is – sad to say – no less relevant now than it was a decade and a half ago, or ever.
But as political as it is, “The Cholera Well” is still a rousing tune, and that’s the magic that has kept Levellers going for two decades. Think what you like of their politics, but their music never missed a beat - and by the evidence of “A Life Less Ordinary” and “The Cholera Well”, Levellers still have what it takes.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: A Life Less Ordinary, folk, punk, rock, The Cholera Well, The Levellers
