Well, this is very refreshing after my day's musical abstinence. I was gushing with my praise of Anarchy, and almost as fulsome about Readymades. I'd almost forgotten, or not given enough attention, to this album, which falls between those two, both stylistically and chronologically.
So it looks back to the thieving-magpie bouncy pop of Anarchy and anticipates the, errr, thieving-magpie folk protest of Readymades, particularly in their cover of Martin Carthy's cover of the Bee Gees' New York Mining Disaster 1941. Chumbawamba never steal for the sake of it, and they always re-frame the bits they borrow. So, for example, Pass it Along is an angry satire on smug visions of telecommuting:
Send this song to twenty people
Add your name
Don't break the cycle
Pass it along by word of mouse
Don't leave the house
Because a virtual office in a virtual home
Means you never have to drive through the wrong part of town
And later in the same song they drop very briefly into the melody from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Our House: "Don't leave the house / Where do you want to go today? / Somewhere you could never take me."
There isn't perhaps quite the brio that I loved in Anarchy, but I'm delighted to have found another fantastic album — one that I considered including in the Top 50. I've ripped it to iTunes and it will be on heavy rotation on my iPod before long.
I hate to think how many times Chumbawamba played in Sheffield through the 1990s and I told myself I should go, and then failed to, out of sloth, or not having anyone else to go with. I finally saw them in 2000 with Tim and Martyn, as Jim's band were supporting them at the Leadmill. I guess this album had just come out then. Fantastic show, too. Lots of costume changes, and masses of energy. I think they may have opened with I'm With Stupid as that particularly sticks in my mind.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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