What’s the story behind the Levellers ‘Collective’? Is it just an excuse to sit down on stage or something more?
Let’s face it, the Levellers could quite easily carry on doing an annual greatest hits tour and survive very easily thank you very much, but does that provide any creative satisfaction when you get to a thirtieth anniversary? That’s where the band was in 2018, they also had an incredible offer on the table from the revered producer John Leckie (Radiohead, John Lennon, Stone Roses and many more), to record an acoustic album at Abbey Road. Leckie was a regular at Beautiful Days and wanted to record the band live in the iconic Studio 2. Who wouldn’t jump at that chance?
It must have given the band pause for thought though, how to make the most of the opportunity? They could easily have recorded an acoustic album off their own back and it would have sounded very good indeed, but after thirty years don’t those songs deserve a fresh approach, even a deconstruction to find their essence, and maybe blow fresh life onto the embers? To a degree this is what they have been doing every year at Beautiful Days in their opening and closing sets of the festival, so the spark was already there.
However the masterstroke was deciding to bring in members of Brighton based art rockers the Moulettes. Band and ringleader Hannah Moule really knows how to turn songwriting inside out. Every one of their compositions feels like it has been honed to convoluted levels of perfection that few other artists could get near to, so lending their sensibilities to the Levellers back catalogue should be very interesting indeed. The two albums that followed bore this out, and now we get to this release, a live recording (album and DVD) from the venerable Hackney Empire.
Goosebumps
Album opener, Carry Me, is the anthemic Levellers plea to protest and stand apart from the madness that surrounds us. The line ‘we’ll petrol bomb the state/We’ll blow away the hate’ feels like a sensible choice when you watch the news from America in the here and now. It felt like a rallying cry back in the late 80s and here, led by Hannah on vocals, it becomes an elegy for what has been and could have been. That got me straight away, it’s worth the entrance fee alone, it gave me goosebumps as it took something loved and familiar and revealed a whole different aspect to it.
Then they go into The Game and do it all over again, the chorus becomes a wail of despair. I mean, I knew their songs are masterpieces, I’ve been boring people with my opinion for years, but this proves the depth and resonance that they have over again. The core message of all their early work was saying ‘wake up, you’re being lied to’, well we still are so when will we wake up?
The Lowlands of Holland has been a slightly hidden gem from the band since it crept onto the B side of Julie back in ’94. The arrangement is largely unchanged, proof that it had a life of its own from the beginning, yet it sounds bigger and deeper because of the larger number of musicians involved in the Collective. Next up, Liberty Song, gives us another prophetic lyric They’re sending in the elite, complete with guns / To advertise the way to go, oh God has nothing changed in the world? But, and it’s a big but, the Levellers have always made you feel you’re not alone.
Battle of the Beanfield summed up so much dissatisfaction and anger at the state when it was released, we’re still paying the price of Thatcher’s madness, but we’re still here – somehow they express that in this new angle they’ve discovered on their songs. They rack up on this album, Julie, England My Home, The Cholera Well, Hope Street and more that express so many emotions and memories – all given sparkling new interpretations that make you listen to them afresh.
The Boatman has Jon Sevink’s iconic fiddle solo front and centre where it should be, buoyed up by a rhythmic energy that knows where it’s going. It morphs into a treat of a didgeridoo solo by the legend that is Stephen Boakes. I could ramble on about the high points of this recording, but that would be spoilers, if you’re a fan it’s an album to be soaked up and revelled in. If you’re a newbie then it is a perfect place to start in your voyage of discovery.
Fact is there’s plenty of wealth in us all / If we fight the good fight
Iain Hazlewood
Levellers / Collective Live album and DVD tracklisting:
1. Carry Me
2. The Game
3. The Lowlands Of Holland
4. Liberty Song
5. Battle Of The Beanfield
6. Wheels
7. Drug Bust McGee
8. Together All The Way
9. Sitting In The Social
10. Man O’ War
11. Julie
12. Ghosts In The Water
13. Born That Way
14. Haven’t Made It
15. England My Home
16. The Cholera Well
17. The Boatman
18. The Road
19. Far From Home
20. Hope Street
21. Down By The River ‘O
22. Just The One
