overlap

Yeah, I know. But I've got plenty of stuff to be getting on with that's more important to be getting on with than to be writing about. I've been to a number of gigs where I've half-written stuff and not got round to completing it, and I'm not apologising for spending that time on the never-ending search for a job instead. I'm aware that when my late father got made redundant in his early or mid forties, that was the end of something for him that was more than just the end of a job, and I'm fortunate that I have had the option to keep doing the other stuff I've been doing with my life for the last few years without an income, and that state won't last forever. Several months into joblessness, I'm aware that life goes on, and confident that someone will fall for my faultless interview technique (ahem!) sooner or later, but I do need to keep working on that more than on this. Normal service will be resumed sooner than later, I hope, but I'm in no position to make guarantees right now.

Of the few new albums and few gigs I've had this year, every time I've come out of the gig and put one particular album on. It's Chumbawamba's new one, ABCDEFG. On saturday I had the happy convenience of a home game coinciding with the only Chumbawamba gig I could make it to on this tour, albeit a gig that took me a little further from home. Arriving ten minutes after ticket time, I wasn't expecting the old 'wait for a gap in the performance before being allowed into the auditorium' game. Coming in in the dark, it was easier to sit on the stairs than try to find a seat while I couldn't see.

The support was O'Hooley and Tidow, an unwieldy combination of surnames and a twin vocal, one keyboard act sitting somewhere between operatic comedy folk-pop and the Indigo Girls. Going into it without expectations, I was easily won over with their charm, good humour and ability to laugh at themselves, and hope to see them again.

Now, Chumbawamba are an easy target. They are an act with one hit, as they sing themselves in Torturing James Hetfield. But they are also a fine musical act, a fantastic set of songwriting talents, and above all these days they are a combination of minimal instrumental backing and multiple vocals. And here's why I've gone back to ABCDEFG so often; writing an album of songs about music could go wrong in many ways, and it could hardly go this right. And yet The Devil's Interval is a storming attack on superstition couched in pastoral melodies. And yet Singing Out The Days is a poignant expression of anti-war sentiment straight out of the trenches. And yet Ratatatay is a beautiful rendition of a story I first heard years ago, of George Melly getting himself out of a sticky situation by the power of singing the absurd. And yet Wagner At The Opera is a great reminder of how history is a contemporary issue, because there are lessons we should never forget.



And in a nutshell, that's what Chumbawamba is in 2010, a comprehensive resource of melodies informing the lively mind of things it shouldn't have missed along the way. With the clocks going forward for BST, I got home at nearly half past two and I don't regret a second of the disruption.

* 'Sometimes A Melody Is Louder Than A Shout' is a line from Voices That's All, track 2 on ABCDEFG

Labels: Chumbawamba, gigs, O'Hooley and Tidow

Anyone who starts a set with a song including the line 'I've been reading John Pilger in the Morning Star' is probably fairly clear where they stand on telling people what they think. And so it is with Tracey Curtis - same venue, same style of woman and acoustic guitar support act as my last visit, but there the similarity ends. Tracey's songs are often about or to her children, and it really suits her voice to do the sort of upbeat summery pop sounding material that has a simplicity in common with nursey rhyme styles, but covering an altogether more adult set of subjects. Like the death penalty.

'I Should Have Kept It Simple' is both a fabulous little song, and something of a representative title in a set that has introductions that can take longer than the song itself, and the sort of relentless infectiousness that would make a Butlins redcoat worry about coming across like Leonard Cohen, and I can see exactly where 'ISHKIS' comes from. Good honest fun, with some proper serious points to make – as if the selection on myspace hadn't already been enough, buying Tracey's album is not in doubt.

The question of making points and its relationship with making music comes up throughout the headliners' set, and it's probably equally lazy and true to suggest that some people's views of Chumbawamba are coloured by their own take on politics, causes, ideology, stunts and That Song, and not necessarily in that order. With the 25th anniversary of Chumbawamba a fairly recent event, the fact they are still here speaks for itself.

There's a comprehensive set of information about how it's now an acoustic five piece act rather than the electric jump up and down shoutiness of what was the tabloids' wet dream of a threat to the nation's pop sensibilities for a good week after the Brit Awards in 1998 on their own website. Last time I saw them, it was in the company of a very good friend of mine that I don't see anything of these days, but I guess thinking too much on things I can't change is a fruitless pursuit. All the same...

Kicking off with Fade Away from 2005's A Singsong And A Scrap, it's one singalong after another, and what sticks with me is the way it's possible to have a good time while still dealing with weightier things than boy meets girl. In which vein, the new album brings us Sing About Love, and the message that 'I don't want to sing about the things I always sing about/I wish I could sing about love', in its own way another twist on Joe Hill's 'don't mourn, organise', perhaps.

The insanely catchy Add Me appears to be a new one on a lot of the crowd, and its treatment of the modern world – it's about adding people as myspace friends – with a healthy dose of bathos leaves it another one hit wonder that got away. Also from the new album, I Wish They'd Sack Me brings hope for escape of any kind from the daily working routine, El Fusilado tells the tale of Wenseslao Moguel surviving the firing squad, All Fur Coat And No Knickers deals with the ongoing commercialisation of anything that can be trademarked, branded or otherwise repackaged and oversold, in this case featuring the Theatre Of Dreams™. Between these newer songs there are older songs, sometimes just everyone singing, sometimes marshalled by various combinations of Lou's siren voice, Neil's guitar, Jude's trumpet, Boff's guitar and singing (and a shirt that's inviting an obvious gag that I'm trying to rise above), and Phil Moody's accordion to fill out the sound a little in places.

And that's really all it needs – I wouldn't say that those members of the electric band that aren't here are disruptive so much as that the music breathes easily in an acoustic environment, and the lack of plugging in/tuning up/swapping stuff around makes the whole thing run with a slick professionalism that crucially fits in a couple more songs over an hour and a half. Which is what it's all about for me, and I leave with probably my biggest haul of merchandise from a gig in years – three CDs and a book is mildly extravagant, but then again, bought this way the money goes most directly to the source without record shops or anyone else needing their cut.

Fabulous, life-affirming, celebratory goodness, and among an admittedly limited number, gig of the year so far for me.

Labels: Chumbawamba, gigs, Tracey Curtis