Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
For many a music fan, the concept album is like allowing the lengthy attention span required for a drive down the back roads of Britain from John O’ Groats to Lands End via Whitby to enjoy the gothic ambiance and a day or two in Stratford to soak up the atmosphere of a greatest of them all and the master of the concept ideal.
To deliver a concept album though, a great one that is, not only takes nerves of steel, it requires the most inspiring of subjects to make it interesting, the ability to turn into something bordering on the verge of legendary and the understanding that it may not sell in a world that for many cannot get past a two and half minute song without repeating half the lyrics three times.
For Scottish band Southern Tenant Folk Union, the concept album has become a realised pinnacle, an apex of musical performance that delivers a mighty blow in the form of The Chuck Norris Project; an album at the peak of physical prowess and mental projection.
Although the album has nothing whatsoever to do with the American actor, aside from the song titles alluding to his cinematic output, the ideas that range through the entire recording look at how America, the often thought, ideal and leaders of the free world, its political subterfuge and at times extraordinary grasp of the plausible made impossible. From its outdated and perhaps arguably misquoted “Right to bear arms” declaration, to the bewildering notion that the country has never had a female or gay leader, to the often barrel-scraping nadir of its national conscious that it crushes everything it believes to be of a socialist nature; all is up for grabs in album of great depth and outstanding quirky truth.
Tracks such as the supremely written The President’s Man, the terrifying thought of Martial Law and Slaughter in San Francisco, Expendable Too, the inevitability of Invasion USA and the two combining unions of The Wrecking Crew make The Chuck Norris Project a surprising, but absolutely welcome to the year’s music playlist. An album of great strength, of divine lyrical style and one that assists the afflicted and suppressed.
The Southern Tenant Folk Union will be at the Atkinson Theatre in Southport on January 22nd. Tickets are available from the Box office on 01704 533333
Ian D. Hall