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Chumbawamba | Readymades

The Chumbawamba revolution is over.
CD, Republic

Tekst: Alexa Williamson

Publicatiedatum: 16 september 2002

Sadly, not everything gets better with age. Wine, cheese, even the Beatles acquire more flavor as they notch up the decades. But not so for Chumbawamba, who, like Coke past its sell-by date, continue to lose their fizz.

The beginning of their recording career in '86, with Pictures Of Starving Children Sell Records released at the peak of the Live Aid era, was superbly dissenting. Fitting, for an ensemble who deemed themselves "wilfully anarchic" and believe that punk rock "is an attitude rather than a music style." However, anything that's controversial soon becomes common, as did the Chumbas in '97, with the release of chart success Tubthumper on mega-conglomerate EMI.

Since then, new material by the group has been flat, and just passable. Moreover, Readymades has sunk to a new and depressing low, as the entire album is suffocated by flavorless, Everything-But-The-Girl-style dance beats, which reached overkill in '99.

The 13-track LP is still laced with clever political themes, though they are only decipherable through the sleeve notes and not the music itself. Don't Pass Go is a noble tribute to Satpal Ram, who was sent to jail for defending himself against a racist attacker; while Sewing Up Crap is about the Factory Act of 1892 that outlawed child labor; and the lyrics in After Shelley are based on a poem by the famous writer about the 1845 Potato Famine. Unfortunately, if you only listened to Readymades and didn't read the insert, you'd never know that it aspired to intellectual greatness. No, not even Alice Nutter's beautiful voice can salvage this album from being mind-numbing background music.

The Chumbas may have been cutting edge in the '80s, but they haven't been able to keep up with the times. Readymades is boring and unoriginal, but even worse, it fails to deliver any kind of message, which has always been the point of the group's music. The best the middle-aged rebels from Leeds can do now is hang up their caps, next to Che Guevara's. The revolution is over.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/chumbawamba/readymades/1867/
Meer Chumbawamba op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/chumbawamba