New Model Army have always been essentially a live band, their following has been built up very much on the strength of their shows, and this album captures that essence for you to keep and enjoy in the comfort of your own home. The title Raw Melody Men is actually an anagram of New Model Army and the cover depicts a seething crowd, dry ice billowing from the stage and light show obscuring any detail of the band. NMA live shows were very passionate affairs for the fans, well coreographed and aggressive dancing, a crowd that knew the words back to front and an energy and spark that electrified the place.
The album opens with the crowd noise rising as the band take the stage, and with the typically understated words "OK...lets do it" from Justin Sullivan the guitar kicks off Whirlwind, a new number at the time but a suitable opening for the set. The drums punctuate the raw guitar rhythms to be joined by the bass and the dark and brooding passions that sum up the bands music are aired to the hungry crowd. Dynamic changes take the song through a range of moods, anger is vented, reflectiions pondered and the song builds to a bass driven crescendo, before running into the next song. A military march of a drum beat and the hand claps of the audience open the Charge, a comment
on the drive and cost of modern society. Typifying Justins ability to weave together historical themes and social comment the song lurches on, an anthem to protest and change.
Space, again from the last album, Impurity, takes a different approach, a bass groove laid over an almost dance beat, guitars picking out the emphasis and the words flowing smoothly over the whole affair. The band continue with the newer material, space fades into the crowds applause as the acoustic and electric guitars build into Purity and for the first time Ed Alleyne Johnson and his five string violin make a welcome visit. Over the course of the last two albums the windswept and romantic playing style of Johnson have helped the band create a new range of sounds, souring through the harder rhythmns and softening the edges hear and there, as Justin half sobs "I dont give a damn that I never will be worthy, fear is the only enemy that I still know."
Keyboards wash from the stage creating the soft underbelly of the brooding themes and messages of White Coats, a warning against science and genetic engerneering.
"How do we tell the people in the white coats enough is enough"
the siren of the keyboards a warning in itself as the message is pounded home that if we tinker too much the earth will have its revenge, and just when you thought it was over, the song reprises and continues the warning.
The violin rejoins the band to great applause for the next number, the audience clap along through a folk shindig which rises to fever pitch as the crowd roars to the now recognisable riff of Vagabonds. The song is about the fact that we are all fellow travellers on a journey through life, a combination of sing along chorus, swooping strings, driving bass and all underpinned by the drum.
We are old we are young we are in this together vagabonds and children prisoners forever.
"So you want to dance yeah?" asks justin as the band launch into one of their most ferocious numbers, Get Me Out, a frenzy of music and attitude, punk to the core and poiniant with it.
As if to give every one a bit of a rest a couple of the older and slower numbers a presented next. Liberal Education, a minimal and spacey number is followed by the classic Better Than Them, here reduced to just guitar and voice and making the point even clearer for its lack of accompanying instruments. Self analysis and inner searching put to song.
The show builds again with the complex rhythmns of Innocence, here violin accompanied, only to be followed by the almost renaissence beats of Love Songs. A love song in the way that only NMA could give you, passion with out the slushy sentiment, affection and pride with out the cheesy imagary.
Off into the dark territories of Lurhstaap, dedicated to the funeral of the DDR, this is a rock dirge for the wake of a country.
"One swallow never made a spring, you can buy a crown, it doesnt make you king, beware the trinkets that we bring"
Nelsons bass rattles away as he provides some nice top end harmonies that contrast well with Justins gruff northern voice.The mood continues with the urban hymn of Archway Towers, a moody tribute to the downward spiral of the poverty and dissapointments of living on the wrong side of the tracks. Guitars grate and cut over a downbeat drum and booming bass line, not a pretty song, but powerful stuff.
The old punk rock roots come to the fore now Smalltown England is all power bass, upbeat drums and a chorus that hits you with a force that you dont expect, a rant about wanting more that life currently offers, jagged guitars cut like razor wire over the top. In contrast the spanish guitar and spill of keyboards announce their most popular song. Green and Grey, the story of watching your close friends going off to a better life whilst you have to stay behind. Justin starts the song, but is drowned out by the crowd singing along. This number builds to a peak, an anthem to absent friends and the lure of "the land of gold and poison"
The last song of the show is The World, bass lines carry the beat as we are subjected to the imagary of the final hours of civilization. As the bomb is about to fall you cry out in pain that you love the world. The song spirals up into a frenzy of fist in the air dark rock and bang....its over.
The job of any live album is to provide a faithful rendition of a band doing their thing, and in an era when many bands have lost the ability to do a live show, this album should be held up as a benchmark of what live shows are all about.
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