Frank Turner you would have to say fair play to him as over a seventeen-year solo career he has released ten solo albums slowly building a following with the last six all going top ten. We are going to have a listen to the one that got to one hundred and fifty-six, yet again going for the popular vote.
Turner had been the lead singer in hardcore band Million Dead who had released a couple of records before announcing their split in 2005 and Turner didn’t hang around releasing Sleep Is for the Week in 2007.
Over mainly acoustic guitar with the odd piano, violin and cello thrown in for good measure Turner delivers an assured folk punk debut that has much to recommend it over the thirteen tracks.
The Real Damage really resonates with me as it’s a wonderful song of waking up the next day not really knowing where you are after a night on the drink, we have all been there and it took me back to my twenty first when I woke up on a church bench and the joy of walking home in Glasgow in December cold and ill. Romantic Fatigue has the line “my teenage years, they were a feminine drought” and on The Ladies of London Town he states, “They never go home with me.” I need to get a physical copy of this record to see if he dedicates it to me as it certainly reflects my life.
A Decent Cup of Tea is short and well told and Turner has spoken about his troubled relationship with his father, they have since reconciled, but he makes his feelings clear on the troubled Father’s Day and Worse Things Happen at Sea the violin enhances the song with Turner becoming more impassioned.
Back in the Day with the banjo is an ode to punk and Once We Were Anarchists with the closing salvo “if the revolution doesn’t want me, I don’t give a shit” show where he has come from and possibly where he is going.
The album ends with the live The Ballad of Me and My Friends where the crowd join in, and he clearly already had a following and was destined for bigger things.
A great introduction.
8/10
GIVE IT A STREAM: The Real Damage
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