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Sunday, September 4, 2011

REVIEW - BETWEEN THE WARS "The Rats" Slippery Slope Recordings (2011)


Between The Wars "The Rats" Slippery Slope Recordings
Release Date: 26 August 2011
Running Time: 25:13, 7 tracks

Between the Wars is the title of an EP and a song that Billy Bragg released in 1985 . The song was covered by The Oyster Band on their 1987 album “Wide Blue Yonder”. But, at the same time, Between the Wars is the name of a young band hailing from Melbourne (Australia) that was featured on our May 2011 sampler.

The Rats” is their second recording after having released a full album last year. Their debut album featured some trad.covers and some original songs. Among them, a couple of gems: the pop song “Super Hero Song” and “The Ballad of The First Fleet”, a number about Australian history.

The brand new EP has no traditional covers, "The Ballad of The First Fleet” has been included once again and the sound is maybe more Celtic pop-rock. Although the sound is acoustic on some songs (tracks 4 and 5) and the music and vocals are not too aggressive, the lyrics follow the folk (punk) tradition. The band writes about the XVIIth century “emigration” to Australia (“The Tail of The Rats”, “The Ballad of The First Fleet”) fighting and dying for "another man's cause" ("Lone Pine") and let us know what they intend to become as a band (“Hourglass”).

Influences come from different sources: Australian artists (Eric Bogle, Weddings Parties Anything even Popproperly Celtic pop) and English artists: (Billy Bragg, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, The Levellers …)

The first song, “The Tail of The Rats” is about Irish people been taken to Botany Bay. Musically it could fit on a TMTCH album and the violin sounds a little bit Oysterband.

The next track is about the Kiwis and the Aussies that came to Turkey during the I World War. A fiddle led Celtic pop-rock sounding song with a Paddy Goes to Holyhead sound.

Echoes from The Levellers "Zeigeist" era can be heard on “Horses and Violins”.

Song no. 5 is an acoustic song but when 2 min 45 sec have gone by, there is a u-turn and drums and bass are added to the mix.

“Irish Rebel Song” is, together with the first and the last song, one of the best moments on the album. Imagine a less vocally aggressive Fisticuffs . Great chorus.

Finally, “The Ballad of the First Fleet” is a rocking number that also deals with the people who were forced to go to Botany Bay.

Between the Wars are friends of The Ramshackle Army. So, Celtic punk fans can be sure that BTW music is not a copycat band, but an interesting new sound coming from the land of Oz.





Tracklist:

01 - The Tail of the Rats 3:05
02 - Lone Pine: 4:00
03 - Horses and Vilins 3:09
04 - Keep to Yourself 3:34
05 - Hourglass 3:51
06 - Irish Rebel Song 4:24
07 - The Ballad of the First Fleet 2:58

http://www.betweenthewars.net
http://www.myspace.com/between.the.wars
http://www.reverbnation.com/betweenthewars
http://www.facebook.com/betweenthewars
http://www.triplejunearthed.com/Artists/View.aspx?artistid=35777

Click to buy:

http://betweenthewars.bigcartel.com

Click to read the lyrics:

http://www.myspace.com/between.the.wars#!/between.the.wars/blog

Review by Kinksmarkham


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