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Album Mon Sep 17 2007
Knocked Down, But He Gets Up Again
I can't resist. Really. I have to poke a little bit of fun at Danbert Nobacon, founding member of UK anarchist outfit Chumbawumba, they of the mid-90s smash hit "Tubthumper". Let's be honest: "Tubthumper" is one of those infuriatingly catchy tunes that sticks in your craw until you want to jam a fork in your eye.
But I'll hereafter put all snarky jokes aside. Danbert Nobacon's got a new solo record, his first in twenty years, and he is (unsurprisingly) one angry man. Library Book of the World, out now on Bloodshot Records, is a time traveler's opera (his words) that casts Nobacon as a riotous folk singer/pirate of the high seas, bringing manufactured dissent to a world gone drunk and strange and adrift in uncharted waters. As backed by the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, songs like "Last Drop in the Glass" feature a snarling Nobacon lamenting Nature's illness and the world a changed landscape. It would be fairly inaccessible, were it not for some general hilarity ("Wasps in November" incorporates well-timed verbal buzzing) and good-natured country that rumbles pleasantly over catchy couplets. Nobacon may not celebrate his legacy as a tupthumping chumbawumber, but he knows how to pen a tune, and sometimes that's the best way to provide a platform for personal politics and civil disobedience. What else is this "poor planet supposed to do"?
Danbert Nobacon drops anchor locally on September 28th at the Old Town School of Folk Music in support of punk-rock stalwarts, the Mekons.
