release date: Jul. 1990
format: cd (2003 reissue)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,58]
producer: Chumbawamba
label: Mutt Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 2. "Tiananmen Square" - 3. "Cartrouble" - 7. "Slap!" - 8. "That's How Grateful We Are"
[ full album ]
4th studio album by Chumbawamba originally released on the band's own label Agit-Prop (in '98 also reissued by One Little Indian). The Mutt Records label is also founded (in 2000) by Chumbawamba. Stylistically, this album marks a major change of sound and style, as the band has moved from its primary anarcho-punk style with influences from punk rock and folk to now embrace alt. dance, indie pop and dub.
The leap into a completely new style may seem enormous - fans have surely found it a radical change; but Chumbawamba doesn't just abide to commercialism or the accepted rules of capitalism. The songs reveal the band's political viewpoints as always, and they concentrate on contemporary political movements and episodes around the globe such as ultra-leftist Ulrikke Meinhof from (German) Red Army Faction [Rote Armee Fraktion], the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 in China, the situation in Northern Ireland, and the continued story-telling of reactions to former ultra-left Soviet under Stalin and life in Nazi German concentration camps during WW2.
Although, utilising the mechanisms of popular music, Chumbawamba stays loyal to its social and political viewpoints, and that mission is fully accomplished on Slap!, which proves to be the band's so far most harmonically sounding album to date. You may choose to just listen to the music, and that's a fine construction of various tunes with hooks and choruses, and you may let yourself linger on the lyrics and listen to stories about real people and crucial historical fragments.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
