ARTiST: Levellers
TiTLE: Levellers
LABEL: Rhino / WEA
GENRE: Rock
TiME: 56:54 min
SiZE: 71,4 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Jul-13-2007
RELEASE DATE: Jul-16-2007
WEBSiTE: www.levellers.co.uk
Track List:
01. Warning 05:02
02. Years Of Solitude 03:59
03. The Likes Of You And I 04:49
04. Is This Art 03:13
05. Dirty Davey 03:44
06. This Garden 05:30
07. Broken Circles 03:16
08. Julie 06:13
09. The Player 03:15
10. Belaruse 03:05
11. The Lowlands Of Holland 05:03
12. English Civil War 02:58
13. Subvert 03:29
14. Belaruse Return 03:18
Release Notes:
Perhaps it's a testament to their literalness, but
leave it to the Levellers to start their album and
opening song "Warning" with a mock air-raid siren
sound. More to the point, though, leave it to them
to have the song be an early '90s indie
pop/semi-baggy/singalong thing, however pumped up
with extra brass by the Kick Horns. Furthermore,
given that the members of the Kick Horns first came
to attention in part due to work in the Waterboys,
the unspoken connections between that group and the
Levellers start making even more sense here. Take
that as a launching point and on Levellers, the band
once again does what it does, anthemic
folk/punk/whatever, and does it very well. It just
won't be the type of thing to automatically warm the
cockles of anyone not already convinced and will
just annoy those who already hate them. All that
said, though, there's audible signs that the group's
vaunted live power now has more of a happy home in
the studio, with acoustic-based numbers like "Is
This Art? " and the dreamy but downbeat ballad
"Julie" coming across with both delicacy and sudden
power. Sevink's fiddling often provides the heart of
the band's songs, but it's Friend's fiery guitar
work that in many ways shines the best here,
benefiting from good production by Markus Dravs.
Chadwick's not moved much as a singer, sounding more
than once like he's audibly seeking breath, but it
could be worse -- he could be Bono. Evidence of the
group's not-always-appreciated sense of smarts
surfaces at various points, thus "100 Years of
Solitude," transposing the title of the book onto a
ramble through modern (circa 1993) confusion, Carter
the Unstoppable Sex Machine-style. Once again, just
about every song sounds like it should be the
set-closing showstopper, but when the results are as
enjoyable enough as the didgeridoo-led "This Garden"
or "Belaruse," there's not much reason to complain.