Levellers // Static On The Airwaves

Levellers – ‘Static on the Airwaves’ (On the Fiddle Recordings)

You’d do well to grit your teeth for the Levellers’ latest release, because ‘Static on the Airwaves’ makes no hesitation at ripping the plaster off an ailing Britain. On this, their tenth studio album, it sees the band at their most consistently socially aware; the themes of war, welfare, government and struggle are laid bare, no need for interpretation. ‘Our Forgotten Towns’ sees the Levellers at their rootsy, fiddlin’ best, with a fast, sinister fiddle line being riffed over by Mark Chadwick’s familiar lilt, a lament on the boarding up of Britain’s high streets, while ‘The Recruiting Sargeant’ is the band’s own reworking of the Black Watch anthem, ‘Twa Recruitin’ Sargeants’. It paints a picture of the stark realities of the modern military via a folk-rock instrumentation that you could imagine Frank Turner learning by rote. It seems jarring that as we enter festival season, where warm lager becomes infinitely more acceptable set to the backdrop of the Levellers’ more carefree anthems (‘What a Beautiful Day’, anyone?), we’re being forced to acknowledge the winters of our discontent with this darkly honest body of work. These are the realities though, and if you think sand is a perfectly viable location to place your head, fear not – the album’s playful orchestration, perfectly realised by producer and brother to Seth, Sean Lakeman – will ease the reality as much as sitting in the sun with a couple of scorching tinnies.

7/10