The album isn't ska in the manner of
One Step Beyond but more like clever Anglocentric pop in the tradition of Squeeze, the Kinks and XTC. The whole Prince Buster thing was a gimmick of sorts and Madness wasn't as deeply involved in the 2 Tone scene as Selector and the Specials. Madness had pretty much moved away from the ska sound with 1982 release
The Rise and Fall Of.
The Rise and Fall was also compared favorably to the Kinks when it was released 27 years ago.
AMG the bible of music reviews has given
Norton Folgate 4.5 stars out of 5, the same mark AMG gave their spectcular debut album
One Step Beyond. For the record, I rarely see AMG give any album a full 5 stars.
Below is a copy of a review by Michael Quinn at the BBC:
Quote:
In their 30th anniversary year and a full decade after their last original album, Camden Town's very own Ska boys Madness return with the most sophisticated and satisfying album of their career.
We Are London sets the nostalgia-tinged agenda for what follows with a curiously compelling blend of the sentimental, the wistful and the ebullient.
Taking its name from a street on the edge of London's financial district, TLONF is ambitious in both scale (clocking in as the longest playing of the band’s nine-album tally) and, in its vividly populated hymnals and cautionary tales of life in the capital, sheer scope. Put another way: it's Madness matured and at the top of their clearly revivified form.
There's more than enough on offer to please diehard fans and to surprise (and possibly even delight) staunch refuseniks of the septet's trademark nutty-ness. Don't rush here, however, expecting a My Girl or a Baggy Trousers, or anything, in fact, that has 'chart hit' stamped on it. While the reggae-tinged lead single Dust Devil and bar room piano-led Forever Young are shot through with signature jauntiness, both boast richer narratives, tellingly detailed textures and a pleasingly plangent ruefulness that underpins the whole album.
Especially accomplished is the obvious restraint employed in the many references to the youthful impetuosity of the Madness of old and the gracefully subtle, Proustian nods towards musical peers and predecessors. Adding to the obvious theatricality of it all is a well-managed barrage of scene-setting sounds – the forlorn whistle of a departing steam locomotive in Africa; evening birdsong in Mk II and, not least, the 10-minute-long opera-within-an opera that is the title track.
Think psychedelic-era Beatles meet The Mighty Boosh and The Liberty Of Norton Folgate starts to come into focus in all its imaginatively gluttinous and picaresque glory. Ray Davies will wonder at the grandiose magnificence of it all and weep at its astonishing coherence.
A magnificent magnum opus – at last – from Madness.
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NOTE: I got Michael Quinn's permission to use the entire text of his review via email but the review should not be reposted without Michael's consent.
The reason why I posted Quinn's review in it's entirety is he hits the nail on the head with his review. I always feel my own remarks on idiosyncratic UK groups are woefully inadquete because I'm an American and don't fully understand vagary nature of the British class system.
I don't want to sell you a lemon, Jackhammer... there are plenty of albums that I'm supposed to like, but I don't. I'm pretty much off the grid in my range of musical tastes, and evaluate music one song at a time, regardless of the artist or genre. I'v embedded
We Are London and
Idiot Child the album's two openers below. I these two songs don't do for you, then
Norton Folgate probably isn't your cup of tea.