Tubthumpers
Chumbawamba
1997: Republic UD-53099
I won’t deny that the title track was one of the two main reasons I bought this CD, but really it was “Amnesia” that clinched it for me. I’m a sucker for melody and harmony, whether they’re the delivery for lyric beauty or sniggering anarchy. And of course Chumbawamba are/were all about the latter.
The album as a whole doesn’t grip me, but individual tracks certainly do! In fact I love most of this CD’s contents, but not as an ensemble...it just gets to be too annoying, with a paradoxically sneering preachiness. But so much of it is such fun to play…. And possibly the well-funded-sounding production discredits their anarchy and implicates them for associating with such funding; I’m in no position to judge that, but I do know that I can’t help but notice how cleanly and professionally these raging vocals have been recorded and presented, and how the essence of the raging is belied by the evidently paid price of the presentation.
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.