To a certain generation the name Ade Edmondson will be forever associated with the comedy character Eddie Hitler. This association will undoubtedly have been exacerbated by the fact that Ade has recently been seen playing for laughs with the wonderful Idiot bastard band, a band that cleverly combined genuine musical talent with out-and-out laughs as they toured the country. The notion of The Bad Shepherds, in all honesty, does little to dispel the image of a comedian moonlighting from his primary career – punk standards done in a folk style – and the opening track on this album, that old Madness gem ‘Our house’, further implies a comedic angle is being pursued. However, comedy is kept at arm’s length on this powerful, intelligent and often biting album, as Ade and his crew wring the poignant undertones from songs that ostensibly we, the listener, believe we know well and, in setting them to a classic folk background demonstrate the desperation and hopeless fury so often found at the heart of punk’s nihilistic assault.
Opening with ‘our house’ is a masterstroke. A song so well-known even people with an abject hatred of music recorded after 1904 will have absorbed some aspect of it through its multiple appearances on television programs and adverts, ‘our house’ always seemed so bright and breezy thanks to Maddness’ delivery and yet here it is recast as a song looking back at a house once so bright and full of life but which is now only haunted by the ghosts of a past long since gone. Indeed, the lyric “sends them off with a small kiss, she’s the one they’re gonna miss, in lots of ways…” gains a whole new level of poignancy when delivered against such an understated backdrop. Another track which has been stripped bare and rebuilt for from the ground up is ‘no more heroes’ and, while the music may have changed, the social commentary seems custom built for these cynical times. The same could be said for the marvellous ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’ which is beautifully penned and sung and which seems to have been written for the very government we find ourselves living under in 2013. Part of the reason for the album’s success is that the band have replaced music that was intrinsically of its time with timeless folk music, lending new power and force to lyrics once caged by the furious music to which they were welded. ‘Going underground’ does much the same job, stripping out the hollow 80’s production of the Jam classic and replacing it with a warm, acoustic guitar and fiddle sound that works far better than you would ever imagine it could, especially given the awkward phrasing and meter of the lyrics.
For acoustic folk, ‘what a waste’ is surprisingly heavy with its dark melody, close harmonies and subtle undercurrent of menace all serving to raise the hairs on the back of the neck. ‘Gary Gilmour’s eyes’ is a touch more fun, but then you’re bought back down to earth with a bump for the band’s elegiac take on Elvis Costello’s ‘shipbuilding’ which has been recast in the mould of long-lost indie-band Strangelove, damn near breaking the heart in the process. ‘Road to nowhere’ burns with a bright fury and then you hit the album’s beating heart, ‘mud, blood and beer’, the title track of the album and the one self-penned composition here which sums up the philosophy of The bad Shepherds specifically and of music fans in general. It’s a beautiful track, one that is entirely honest about the experience of being a festival goer and which you’ll come back to time and again simply because it corresponds so exactly to your own experiences. The album closes with the apt instrumental ‘off to the beer tent’ which does much to inform the listener’s destination at the album’s conclusion, so compelling is the music’s flow.
The Bad Shepherds are a band who bring folk and punk together in a wholly convincing and often beautiful package. The music here is first rate, liable to bring a smile to the lips of even the most fervent of folk purists, whilst fans of punk’s left-wing rhetoric will find familiar tracks recast and reworked in a way that never loses sight of the protest nature of the songs. Music that is custom made to be enjoyed with friends in attendance and beer in plentiful supply, ‘Mud, blood and beer’ is the perfect summation of the bad Shepherd’s festival experiences and offers an emotionally charged ride through England’s scarred landscape, mixing nostalgia with euphoria and political awareness with a desire to empty the last keg at an ale festival. What more could you ask from a modern folk band?
