Levellers - We the Collective (2018)
Artistic pretension in rock music has both pushed musical history forward and littered bargain bins in record stores (sometimes at the same time). It can strike in the oddest places, and a band that you feel would feel most at home sounding off in a pub is arguably among them. This record essentially revisits some of the Levellers' (apt name) politically fueled anthems, adding lush string arrangements, and what we end up with is a disconcerting sort of left-wing anarchic mash-up rock musical; one which one could imagine making it off-Broadway. I am intrigued as to how this fits in the band’s trajectory, how one-off it might really be, but not sure how soon I’ll pursue the matter. There is nothing specifically wrong with any part of this, but mashed together the sum feels somewhat incongruous, occasionally taking on an andrewlloydweberish flair, which doesn't really match the proletarian subject matter, and is certainly not my cup of meatloafy tea.
All can be forgiven, though, on the merits of the perfectly timed and executed revival of the Zounds' punkish classic "Subvert" (which remains a great piece of modern-day agitatsiya), and if some youtuber has not yet used it to score the sequences in Fight Club where Durden and associates season food items with bodily fluids while moonlighting in catering, and generally wreak other surreptitious havoc as "infiltrates" in “the system” and what not, well, the internet is just failing us all.
