Let's cut to the chase: if you're still in Cloudcuckooland and think CHUMBAWAMBA sound like either CRASS or the punchy troupe responsible fro the likes of "Enough Is Enough" circa 2002, then you need to get your ears syringed pronto or switch off now.
If, however, you're open-minded enough to run with new ideas and enjoy our best bands evolving, then hang around, for "Readymades" is the kind of record that only a band with both bags of confidence and a thirst for new challenges could have made.
Still here? Good. You won't regret it, although you may have to delve a little deeper to get total fulfilment from "Readymades", as its' reflective, dance-inflected textures require slightly more conscious effort from the listener.
From the moving fanfare of the opening "Salt Fare, North Sea" in, though, "Readymades" (the 10th Chumbas album - blimey!) is soon a contender for their finest work. Second track, "Jacob's Ladder" is arguably your reviewer's favourite here, with the catchy guitar refrain and brass couching a dead-on lyric that relates to both Churchill's expedient attitude to the loss of Naval personnel during WW2 and the recent, horrendous 'KURSK' disaster. It opens with "Like rusty old nails at the bottom of the sea...telling no tales for the Admiralty" and when the "They sent him to the war to be slain" sample kicks in, it's almost unbearable poignant.
Despite employing both breakbeats and the sheen of modernity here, CHUMBAWAMBA are never guilty of sacrificing melody, and certainly haven't gone soft lyrically by any stretch of the imagination. The gentle "Home With Me" is a case in point: almost a catalogue of global insurrection in snapshot ("Paris 1968...words along the Berlin Wall...Barcelona's cobbled streets") it blooms into a wonderful chorus that Radio 2 would scarcely baulk at.
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The issues don't stop there, either. "Without Rhyme Or Reason(The Killing Of Harry Stanley)" employs two separate folk samples - one could be Sandy Denny, but I don't work at Cecil Sharp House, so cut me some slack - and is a potent elegy for a man shot dead by the police for simply carrying a chair leg that needed mending! The song that sprung to mind when I first heard it was THE ANGELIC UPSTARTS' "Murder Of Liddle Towers", which describes a similar situation 25 years back. Nothing changes, basically.
For this writer, "Readymades" other two stand outs are "Don't Pass Go" and "Don't Try This At Home." The first is built around a brain-bothering piano melody and seismic breakbeats and reprises the case of the incarcerated Satpal Ram ("didn't he know it was a waste of time/ all stitched up by a thin blue line"), while "Don't Try This At Home" once again pits a wryly ironic insurrectionist lyric - "If you walk on the beach with King Canute, you'll be walking back alone" - against a sweet and surefooted melody and remains in your head long after you've removed the CD.
Scratch beneath the surface and you'll discover that CHUMBAWAMBA have actually jettisoned none of their previous anthemic qualities or propensity for cutting lyrical insight. However, "Readymades" nurtures a reflective, thought-provoking and ultimately extremely satisfying new chapter from a band who by rights shouldn't sound so vital and challenging after almost two decades.
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