Heart of a Punk - Soul of a Rasta

LP Review

The Liberty of Norton Folgate by Madness



It's the 19th January 2009, Blue Monday the most depressing day of the year so the BBC news geezer has just told me and I'm so auto suggestive I believe him whole heartedly. Black & freezing outside and bloody cold inside here in deepest Shropshire, the boiler has either gone out or just isn't boiling and to cap it all the farmer is doing something out there in the darkness so incredibly mind bendingly noisy I've got to do something to blot it out. Computer goes on, then I traipse through the house swaddled in a blanket (anyone seen Withnail & I?) in an attempt to find something to play. Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division comes to hand first, that should perk me up - what am I thinking. God help me, I am alone in the wilderness only Jah can hear my prayer! "You have email" is just perceptible above the unearthly sounds from outside I traipse back to the computer to see if there has been some divine cyber intervention. And there has "The Liberty of Norton Folgate" new album by Madness pre release download, what the…………. I click like fury and while its downloading I go off and lie under the coal boiler giving it a good old fashioned stoking, suddenly from above I hear music, I hear "Na Na Na Na Na Na Naa Na Na" the album has downloaded and launched into track one, I get myself back upright and look outside, thank God it's all gone quiet out there and the farmer has gone. He's gone alright but what a top chap he has cut the top two feet off my hedge with his hedge cutting thingy whatsit I suddenly have an extra two feet of bright blue sky and yellow sun light glinting through the windows and from afar the dulcet tones of Madness fill the house. Divine intervention or divine madness, who can say but Blue Monday, what Blue Monday?

So what is there to say, sometimes it's a hard job being a fan of a band and trying to extol the virtues of their new album when the product itself is well, not that good. The review ends up being like some hideous comb over job, a Perspex accentuate the positive eliminate the negative routine. It's been a long time since "Wonderful", has the gestation period been too long, has the boat been missed? Even after the first play of "The Liberty of Norton Folgate" my doubts & worries are not just quashed they're scotched, squashed and quite frankly squished - this is going to be a very easy review to write.

The album opens up with the "Na Na Na Na Naa Na Na" of the Carl Symth penned "We are London" and we are immediately whisked through the London streets stopping here and there to have places of significance pointed out to us. Like a walking guide book & rule book for surviving London we are told "You can make it your own Hell or Heaven, live as you please" lyrically and musically, it unfurls as a perfect frontispiece to the album.

Then with a deftly controlled brass section we are heralded into "Forever Young", heralded into a wonderful slice of Madness reggae underpinned by Bedders whose fingers trip over the bass strings in majestic Barrett fashion, giving my speakers a good old fashioned dusting. There is space here for both Thompson and Foreman to have a moment to do their stuff on this possible single release, while throughout the forever young Suggs croons & reflects as the grains of sand gently drop. (Ok get the smoke out of the mixing booth)

"Dust Devil" follows and is another finely drawn character from the world of Madness, there's been a few; The Bed and Breakfast Man, Johnny the Horse, my favourite Benny Bullfrog, Mrs Hutchinson etc. We are told "she keeps a gizmo under her pillow" (what can they mean?) naughty little Dust Devil.

And so to track four, the ten minutes tens seconds pivotal centrepiece and musical journey that is "The Liberty of the Norton Folgate". What can I say; can I say "A day in a Life"? Apparently I can. "A Day in a Life", "For the Benefit of Mr Kite", "You know my Name Look up the Number" and then some!

Musically and lyrically it is all here, eastern strings, hand drums, north African pipes, the spoons "Have a banana" is blurted out, we are introduced to "the Musical Shrimp" walk through Dickensian streets past side show freaks, led on and on deeper into the Norton Folgate our hand firmly held throughout, sometimes we are happy that it is so, sometimes we'd like to break free uneasy at what we might be taken to see next. But it is ten minutes ten seconds in which you smile inwardly and laugh out loud, attracted, repelled but hoping it will never end. Unequivocally with "Liberty" Madness have their opus magnum (that ain't an ice cream). After the rise and fall and rise again of Madness we find that the wine wasn't all drunk to the dregs early, a whole cellar was filled to the gunnels laid down for thirty years and now it shall be drunk.

You'd think we'd get a bit of packing to recover for a moment after The Liberty but no. We have a classic vignette "Sugar and Spice" written by Mr Barson, where we glimpse filmic moments frozen in time, again the London backdrop looms large. Barson moves from organ to piano and Woodgate's drums nimbly punctuate the ebb and flow, a sweet musical coating for a bitter lyrical pill.

Mike Barson - with London Looming Large

And so we travel southbound down the Northern Line from Golders Green to Clerkenwell for the "oom pa pa" of the "Clerkenwell Polka". Here Smyth underscores the lead vocal in a low growl reminiscent of the late, great and immortal Mr Duncan Poundcake before suddenly the piece is whipped up from a polka into a fully fledged New Orleans jazz funeral march. We're only half way through and no vinyl to turn over, well not yet.

Track 7 "Bingo" and Track 11 "Idiot Child" are both Thompson & Barson penned and the duo is in top form on both. "Bingo" is another Madness gem, an exquisite piano riff leads off to be joined by Thompson's saxophone drifting in from nowhere before Suggs leads us off for "all stations to High Barnet".

Both "Idiot Child" and "Bingo" are so cleverly and lightly constructed it makes you believe that it must be so very easy game this music lark. All you need is: 1. A lyricist who can take inspiration from something intensely personal and turn it into something universal. 2. A musician who can place those lyrics in the most apt and inspirational musical setting and 3. A band willing to over or underplay the given piece, which ever is required, to create the perfect whole. Easy?

Well you could have downloaded and be listening to "Liberty" in the it's taken you to read this twaddle, so I'll crack on. The Thompson & Woodgate written "Rainbows" evokes the London of the Swinging Sixties (the harpsichord comes out of the box for a brief airing), then just when you think Barson can't possibly come up with another classic rinky dinky piano riff we have "That Close", Suggs's words & vocals are so full of intent we're swept up and driven along. We have a film noir movie short with "MK II" Michael Caine driving in his car, or something much much darker? And finally our day in London ends with a night "On the Town", a duet which features Rhoda Dakar - she doesn't have much luck with her relationships this poor girl, she was having problems like this thirty years ago with the Specials on "I Can't Stand it". It is good to hear Rhoda Dakar's* voice here it would have been very easy (and probably commercial profitable) to shoe horn in one of the crop of young mockney singing girls that are about at the moment, thank sound judgement that this didn't happen. Anyway back to the song, Suggs waits at home in the early morning for Rhoda to return - a tale of infidelity or a tale of escape we don't know but it closes with a swirl of strings that gradually fades to a lone Bontempi sounding drum box, brilliant.

With "Liberty" both lyrically and musically the single seven clicks, it is easily the most consistently strong Madness album from beginning to end in both concept and execution. Is it a concept album? Well it's certainly London the album. Not the London of Westminster and the Strand to be found in Vaughn Williams's London Symphony, it's the drinking, living, singing, shouting, loving, London of Camden Town writ large. Neither is it the impenetrable elitists' concept of London found in Nitin Sawhney's London Undersound, like books of Dickens the album entertains whilst lightly depressing all the fundamental emotional buttons, regret, stupidity, injustice, loss of youth, missed opportunities, reconciliation. In "Liberty" life or shit happens to us small specks that inhabitant London, but is us or London to blame, either way we coexist, and in a cold moment of lucidity we look back and try to make sense of the madness. It doesn't have the overflowing exuberance that "One Step Beyond" had but after thirty years that could not be possible and what it lacks in youthful exuberance it easily makes up for in mischief, whimsy and musical savvy. As I've said the track "The Liberty of the Folgate" is unequivocally Madness's opus magnum and surely the album itself is their magnum opus or if you like their MADGNUM OPUS!

The Liberty of Norton Folgate is released on the 2nd of March 2009.
Madstock @ Victoria Park is on the 17th July 2009
It would be rude not to.


* Since going to print (pretentious moi?) I have had nasturtiums cast on the authenticity of my review. Sorry that can't be right, I've aspersions cast on the authenticity of my review - yeah that's it. I've been contacted by a top guy with his finger well and truly on the Madness pulse who tells me this might not actually be Rhoda Dakar on the download version of "On the Town" but a young lady by the name of "Amber" he thinks her surname could be "Nectar". Hey wait a minute mate you've never seen me how do you know I'm as stupid as I look. Anyway thanks Graham (it isn't Suggs, don't start that one) this isn't the first time I've been wrong and it certainly won't be the last. - Ed

Yes well I knew this is what would happen but you pestered and pestered me "Please Bigot please let me review Liberty please please please, I did get you the Goldblade single for Christmas" and now you've gone and got yourself in trouble and you want me to help you out.
Well now I'm going to read your Franz Ferdinand review, no doubt that's just a fabricated tissue of lies as well. They'll have to be changes next month Sonny Jim! - It's a sad day Ed - a very sad day. Bigot



Well it was.......