Hotly anticipated
Alongside Joy as an Act of Resistance from IDLES, The Blinders debut Columbia is one of the most hotly anticipated albums of 2018.
I was in fortunate to receive early copies of both releases, IDLES having the earlier release date and being mesmerised by their release in recent weeks, The Blinders album had a lot to live up to.
Columbia
I’m glad to say it did not disappoint. Columbia provides the listener with an evocative blend of light and shade, dark matters, imploring pleas and optimistic hopes for the future. The album title comes from the name given to a promised Utopia. The kicker, however, is that it was the vow of a Utopia Charles Manson promised to his “family”.
However, The Blinders have their eyes wide open, their manifesto promises illumination and an element of positivity emerging from the willingness to open ears and minds. They comment on the gloomier side of modern society and the negativity that pervades while drawing on history to illustrate that we haven’t come far in the intervening years, often seemingly going backwards on occasion.
Thunder Riders
Johnny Dream and co. deliver their fervent assertions with a powerful passion and an edge with the band donning stage alter-egos and war paint for live shows:
“Once the war paint is on, we become monsters, thunder riders. As Johnny Dream, I can totally lose myself in the music and become a shamanic Jim Morrison character. We can do anything, be anyone”
There is a similarity with IDLES in their positively clamorous racket and socio-political outlook add to that an element of Arctic Monkeys with Johnny Dream often having a bit of an Alex Turner twang. Their soundtrack is driven by a solid rhythm section with edgy spiky guitar and a proclivity for songs seeking justice.
Gotta Get Through
Fans of the band will be familiar with the first two tracks on the album. The album opens with one of the bands singles Gotta Get Through. It is their statement of intent from the outset. Pounding, driving drums and bass, jarring guitar, slighty distorted vocal. Whatever happens they will get through.
“Gotta get through…..gotta stay alive…..won’t you get me through…won’t you be my novocaine”.
The band are ready to face the world and anything it throws their way.
“I’ve got divine right” screams Johnny Dream on L’Etat C’est Moi (I Am the State) echoing Louis XIV and what a certain PUSA seemed to believe about himself, he can do whatever he wants, without answering to anyone. Think again Trump “You think you thought you were, you are not.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/donald-trump-investigation-roger-cohen.html
Dance, dance, dance to the hate song
Hate Song seems to allude to the current rise of hate speech and the right, with Brexit, Trump & Yaxley-Lennon bringing out the worst in people and seemingly giving them a platform for spouting their odious opinions and vitriol and defending it as freedom of speech and the reclamation of their country – “Dance, dance, dance….to the hate song”. Engaging repetitive guitar riffs soundtrack the passionately delivered lyrics rising to a screaming speeding crescendo.
Thumping drums welcome in Where No Man Comes, weighty tribal beats that are mirrored in the straight to the point, Free the Slave which tackles a number of substantial societal issues in a short and succinct way with the music abruptly stopping halfway through the last line “free the boy about to become a man, in a society like this who the fuck would want that”
Police brutality is tackled on a reworked version of their debut single I Can’t Breathe Blues, the song which talks of strangleholds and legitimised brutality was specifically inspired by listening to the recording of the police brutality victim Eric Garner.
Big Brother is watching
The bands love of Orwell is apparent in the downbeat acoustic and strings of Ballad of Winston Smith with its many 1984 references, scarily prescient and valid. The more I see in the news in current days and weeks, the more this song is relevant. “Hoodwink society” they sing as the mainstream media digs the dirt and builds stories out of nothing, letting those who are destroying the world hide in plain sight and it get away with murder (literally in some cases).
Et Tu is two minutes of pure energy and biblical reference “as martyrs we enter the arena…..but we die on the cross all alone.” The theme welcoming in and continuing in the epic Brutus. “We’re in this together for the better, so they say.” The frantic energy returns halfway through Brutus, with the song ending in a flurry of furious lyrical spleen-venting.
The American Nightmare
Brave New World – is this a comment on “the American dream”? Is there such a thing in this day and age especially with Trump in charge? Current US cultural references abound “They built a wall and they built it high” with mention of the bizarrely popular fame hungry Kardashians. “Oh to be from the land of the free” the lyrics spit sarcastically.
One of the many album highlights is Rat in a Cage. A cry of hope for the future “Come together we need each other”. The theme of hope continues in the touching piano ballad of final track Orbit (Salmon of Alaska). Written following the suicide of a friend the song is poignant and tender. While the subject matter is raw and emotional, ultimately this final song on the album leaves you with a feeling of optimism.
“So the boy starts to dream, dream the most dangerous of dreams. A dream of a world, in which he, she, me and the salmon of Alaska are free. Free from the power of the man, and from those that say that you cannot have. Free of those who sit in their golden baths, free of those who have the last goddam laugh.”
Essential
Throughout the album there are several little nods to important influential artists from over the years “Dance, dance, dance…” in Hate Song evoking Joy Division. The Berlin Wall references in Brave New World bringing to mind Rotten’s sneering declarations in Holiday in the Sun. While The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are hinted at in the refrain from Rat in a Cage, with its Come Together line, bluesy harmonica and Sympathy for the Devil like woo-hoo’s.
The Blinders are one of 2018’s essential bands. The well-known sporting analogy says it all, the boys played a blinder.
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