Ladies and gentlemen, we have finally arrived.
As has been noted, we live in troubled times. At the very least, interesting times. Times that would seem ripe for documenting or acknowledging in art. Sadly rock music, specifically that from the UK, has been found wanting. The old guard have been negligent; this week Richard Ashcroft implored musicians to stop giving political speeches, it would be nice to hear from Primal Scream around about now and most disappointingly, despite having spent their entire careers being political, Manic Street Preachers have turned their back on such commentary. As for the class of 2003-6, they have proven what we always suspected: they haven’t got much to say. Arctic Monkeys are gazing at the stars and Franz Ferdinand continue to be beholden to the dancefloor.
In fairness, it’s not been for lack of trying. Slaves and Sleaford Mods have been operating on the periphery for some time, but this year the door has been well and truly kicked open. Shame are the oiks, Cabbage are the dramatists, Idles are the outraged and now we have The Blinders, the fablers.
Described as ‘an alternate world informed by reality’, Columbia lures the listener into its world from track one. The winding, almost Egyptian melody of Gotta Get Through charms like a snake which wraps around your neck with a brutal chorus. L’Etat C’est Moi (a Louis XIV quote translating to ‘I am the state’) puts frontman Johnny Dream (sadly a stage name) in the shoes of someone claiming to have ‘divine right’ as the band channel Humbug-era Arctic Monkeys around him. Hate Song, meanwhile, sounds like the riotous defiance of The Stooges while ‘they can’t have what you have’.
Where No Man Comes marches with foreboding doom, the march concluding with Free The Slave which is putting you on notice for what follows. It sounds like it should be opening a Kasabian album, complete with war chant and seguing into I Can’t Breathe Blues which ups the pace and is already one of their signature tracks. It’s all driven by Matt Neale’s powerful drumming, lifted straight from the John Bonham school of making the skins a lead instrument. It’s an immersive trilogy which is over in a matter of minutes.
Literary references are the album’s strength. Whilst it’s an obvious touchpoint, George Orwell’s seminal 1984 seems ever more prescient and Ballad Of Winston Smith tells us a tale from Smith’s perspective, and with the slowest pace on the album it’s as close as we come to, well, a ballad. The pace is immediately picked up again with Et Tu, using metaphors in describing the fallout of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union and the headlines accompanying Boris Johnson during the days after. Brutus goes even further, noting ‘a celebration for a kangaroo nation’.
But Columbia doesn’t beat you over the head with its allegories. Brave New World might not be about Trump’s America, it could be about an ‘idiot king building a wall’ (although the Kardashians reference makes it hard to avoid), and Rat In A Cage doesn’t have to be about the migrant crisis, it could be a straight-forward call to arms, as Dream tells us to ‘come together, we need each other’. The politics is there if you want it to be, but it’s oblique enough to ignore should you choose to.
The Blinders join Cabbage, Shame and Idles as pioneers of a movement we’ve needed for some time, giving us faith in rock music again. In 2018, punkadelia has finally caught fire.
Long may they be fanning the flames.
