Album: Levellers, Static on the Airwaves (On the Fiddle)

 

Andy Gill
Monday 25 June 2012 11:06 BST
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The Levellers' latest broadsides and refusenik anthems mostly follow the feisty fiddly-diddly folk-rock manner, but on the occasional track like "We Are All Gunmen", a mocking media fantasy of stability, they've introduced a slightly stilted synthesiser element, resulting in a more modernistic electro-rock style.

The landscape remains largely unchanged, however: "Our Forgotten Towns" offers a bleak portrait of boarded-up Britain; sawing fiddles and splashy cymbals attest to the turbulence afflicting the "Raft of the Medusa", and computer-game addiction gets a shafting in "Second Life". But they're never more rabble-rousing than when updating the press-gang plaint "The Recruiting Sergeant" with references to Helmand and Hercules transporters.

Download: We Are All Gunmen; Second Life; Raft of the Medusa

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