The proof that all hope is not lost
With their fourth album, North East three piece, The Young Un’s had plenty to live up to. Award’s have been coming out of their ears in the last few years, notably the best Group at the BBC Folk Awards. Which is lovely of course, until you have to live up to that billing.
The best do just that – whatever genre they are from – and you had best believe that with “Strangers” The Young Un’s haven’t just met the expectations, they’ve vaulted clear over the hurdle and created something truly special.
There are 10 songs here and it is interesting that they kick off with the only one that Sean Cooney didn’t write. That said, “A Place Called England” is a perfect opener for them. An award winning cut in its own right (Maggie Hollands won best song with it at the 2000 folk awards) it excoriates the “men that think that England is just a place to park their car” but does so by discussing the natural beauty of the land, in a similar way that Martin Simpson did on his recent work.
Finding the beauty in things is a motif for the rest of the record too. The wonderful harmonies on “Ghafoor’s Bus” are full of hope that even in these times, when thanks to the pernicious right-wing politics of the Tories the term “asylum seeker” is one with poisonous meaning, that there is some decency left.
Dealing with big issues is not a problem for “Strangers”. The simply gorgeous “Be The Man”, which discussing with the tragic suicide of a gay man, has echoes of “Workers Playtime” era Billy Bragg, and sees the a cappella band backed with Cello from Bellowhead’s Rachael McShane and Flugelhorn from Chumbawumba’s Jude Abbott.
These stories of ordinary people also take in “Carriage 12”, and the heroism of the passengers in the face of the Thalys train terrorist attack in France and the tale of Cable Street anti-fascist protesters, also have resonance today. We can beat them, it seems to say, if only we stand together.
Brilliantly paced, and with light and shade by the barrowful, “Dark Water” for example, is darkly poetic, contrasted by “Bob Cooney’s Miracle” and its black humour (“Jesus may have got more done, but he had five loaves not just one”) while “Lapwings” is beautifully evocative.
Some of the sharpest songwriting you will find anywhere, “With These Hands” deals with the struggle of a woman who arrived in the UK from Guyana and deals with contemporary racism along the way. And nowhere else will you find a song about a young Jewish Man from the North East who formed Marks And Spencer. You will here, and “The Hartlepool Pedlar” brings a magnificent collection to a close.
Of course it’s going to win awards again – if it doesn’t there is something very wrong – but “Strangers” is rather more important than that. Only the best can take tales of the everyday and make them universal. Dylan maybe, Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle. The Young Un’s belong in that company. Whether there is a “better future for us all,” as they sing on “Ghafoor’s Bus” who knows? What is clear is that if everyone thought – and wrote songs like – The Young Un’s, the world would be a better place.
Rating 9.5/10
