Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
In our lifetime the meaning and the word of what England meant has undergone a radical change, it is arguably a transformation that the world has seen fit to experience at the same time but for those raised on the spirit of belief in what the country endured and fought against in the oppression of tyranny from Nazism, the time it offered the rest of the world to lay plans to stop Fascism taking a grip on continental Europe forever, all now gone. A crumpled laughing stock and used as an example as state which values its millionaires more than the hungry, the poor, the disabled and every state in between.
This is England in the 21st Century, it might not be a place you recognise, it could be a realm of broken promises or indeed if you are so inclined, a utopia in which you revel, however you view it, it is fair to say the country has changed, or at least our perception of it has.
It is a kind of freedom to understand this new world we find ourselves in, educated by those who come fleeing from oppression in countries that we have helped destroy. We sit with just enough comfort watching endless television shows that are not designed to test our minds but to see how pliable, how numb we can become, and then we believe we have the freedom to take anything we want, to party till dawn because that is our right, and never mind the consequences of the junk we have digested.
It is a freedom of expression that makes Sean Taylor’s single, This Is England, such a demanding and superb listen, if a nail requires driving through a wall of silence to be heard then it seems that Sean Taylor’s rhythmic journey through the underbelly of English life is what it takes.
It is in anger that truth is allowed to breathe, how revolutions are fought and won; only when the truth is heard, do we permit ourselves to be free, free to embrace, or free to ignore, such is our choice and what we have to do to be happy. It is an anger that Sean Taylor embraces, and rightly so, eloquent, to the point and without pulling a single punch; This Is England for a new generation, one that is not afraid to say how it feels because they have been told they have nothing to give, or to lose.
A dramatic single, a forceful beat which is steadfast and generous, Sean Taylor hits home with This Is England.
Sean Taylor releases This Is England on February 1st.
Ian D. Hall