Review - Tom Robinson

Tom Robinson
Only the Now

As of this writing, it's been thirty-eight years since Tom Robinson first burst onto the music scene with his eponymous band's debut single "2-4-6-8 Motorway", and sixteen years since he released his last full-length album. He's still got it.

This album is very different from both the punk-inflected rock of the Tom Robinson Band and the softer, more pop sound that he leaned towards with Sector 27 and his previous solo records. It opens with the acoustic guitar and glistening strings of "Home In The Morning, a fantastic farewell song that perfectly suits the world-weary, slightly hoarse voice that Robinson has developed in recent years. After that, it's on to "Merciful God", a solid, rage-filled rant that harks back to the barely-restrained anger of "Power in the Darkness". Its subject matter of imperialism and religious violence could fit perfectly into a standard punk song, but the arrangement Robinson gives it is sinuous, reminiscent of the Pogues' "Turkish Song of the Damned", which adds a fresh vibe to the glorious cacophony of Adam Phillips' guitar. Personally, I loved the stomping, bass-heavy version of "The Mighty Sword of Justice" that Robinson did when I saw him play earlier this year, but the more melodic album version is just as good, largely thanks to Frank Rollock's steel pan and the backing vocals by Billy Bragg, Martin Carthy, and most of all Lisa Knapp.

"Don;t Jump, Don't Fall" is one of Tom Robinson's most affecting songs, a half-spoken lament that is made all the more heartbreaking by a crushing string arrangement. Crushing really is the right word here - the strings seem to descend like a lead blanket, pushing you down into the song, forcing you to listen. Probably the best song on the album. "Holy Smoke," the next song, takes us from the sublime to the ridiculous, but in the best possible way. It's a song about using Bible pages to roll joints, and God is voiced by Ian McKellan - what's not to love? Swami Baracus' contribution provides yet more evidence that Robinson really knows how to pick collaborators.

I'd like to shake the hand of whoever made the decision to get John Grant to sing "Cry Out". This has been one of my favourite Tom Robinson songs since I heard it at the first gig I ever went to, and Grant's soulful, melancholic voice is perfect for the desperation conveyed through the lyrics. Tom Robinson and John Grant each have their own distinct sound, but their duet here works brilliantly.

Personally, I found the second half of the album underwhelming. It's good - I like the Beatleesque melody of "In My Life" and "Only the Now ends the album on a sweet note, but it just didn't grab me the way the first half did. Still, it's a great album, and I'd definitely recommend it.

Rating: 7/10

Thinking Out Loud: The Political Spectrum

So I recently took the political compass quiz, and as expected I ended up in the bottom-left corner (for those that don't know, the horizontal axis is economic left/right and the vertical axis is authoritarian/libertarian, so the bottom left is libertarian socialism). That got me thinking - how exactly should the political spectrum be laid out? We can agree that the left is socialism (that is, worker ownership of the means of production) and the right is capitalism (that is, private ownership of the means of production), but what about terms like "far left", "centre-right" and so on? In this post, I'll be setting forth my idea of how we define these terms.

If the term "left-wing" refers to socialists, then it makes sense that the more stringently someone applies the principles of socialism, the further left on the spectrum they should be placed. The most basic principle of socialism, as mentioned above, is that workers should control their workplaces. There are two different schools of thought in regard to how this should be acheived. On the one hand, authoritarian socialists (Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists etc.) hold the view that the state should control the means of production and the workers should control the state via a dictatorship of the proletariat - that is, a democratic society with an active and politically conscious working class. On the other, libertarian socialists (anarchists, communalists, council communists and some Marxists) take the view that the workers should exert direct control. Libertarian socialists, then, advocate for a greater degree of worker control than their authoritarian counterparts, and so should be placed further to the left, with the most dogmatic anarcho-communists and individualists at the extreme end of the spectrum due to their refusal of any workplace hierarchy at all; they would be followed by anarcho-syndicalists and the other libsocs, then the Trots, Maoists, and finally the Marxist-Leninists. On this newly rearranged scale, Stalin would be only slightly to the left of Jeremy Corbyn.

But now that I've mentioned Corbyn, we come to a new question: what about democratic socialists? Their insistence on building socialism by slow reform sets them apart from the rest of us, who agree - from Mao Zedong to Renzo Novatore - that violent revolution and the suppression of reactionaries is the only way to break the power of the ruling class. This, to me, speaks of a fundamental ignorance of the nature of capitalism, and it is enough to place Attlee, Chavez and their like closer to the centre than the Leninists, especially since demsocs are so vague on how, exactly, they intend to change the class character of the state.

I'll go into the right-hand side of the spectrum in my next post, as to do so here would make this post way too long.