Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Acknowledging the absurdity of life is a gift that passes by so many people, caught as they are in the stringent sobriety of emotion that they cannot see the joke for the punchline they imagine.
To relish the sense of the absurd is the privilege of those that see beyond that punchline, those enigmatic beings who seek out our souls with every desire to inform us of the generosity of the meaningful purpose of farce and logical madness.
To have Madness back in our lives is to witness that enigmatic delivery once more in action, the belief of the intricate and in depth personality of songs unveiled over the course of the band’s double album, is one that raises the spirits in a world fully engaged in the art of self-destruction of believing absurd means to a kind of deceit, a confrontation of the senses that means having humour pepper your conversation is a battle cry, an urging to fight what some will insist a serious matter.
Theatre Of The Absurd Presents Madness C’est La Vie sees the return of the magnificent six, and once more the listener is tickled and appreciative of the scope of the music that has been the calling card since what can be understood as the second coming of Madness, from the 2009 outrageously cool event that encompassed The Liberty Of Norton Folgate and furthered the cause in Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da, and Can’t Touch Us Now; for whilst we must all grow up and accept life’s challenge of wisdom, we can if we try hard enough turn that to our advantage and show that wisdom is another name for influence; and in this case Madness influence more than ever a sense of the Progressive within the pop outer-glow.
If The Liberty Of Norton Folgate was cinematic, then Theatre Of The Absurd Presents Madness C’est La Vie is the proof of the close up thespianism and role play of the much vaunted music hall, the wonder of bringing together a various and diverse assortment of emotional experiences in front of a crowd that can see the colour of the eyes of the performers, and the souls enjoying exactly what they are playing.
Madness have always been theatrical, but now they proudly can be seen as that link that brings all art together, and in an album that plays heavily with the idea of the theatre’s play, of acts and surprises, of magic of the expose and the anticipated melodrama, songs such as Baby Burglar, Hour Of A Need, The Damsel In Distress, The Law According To Dr. Kippah, the excellent Run For Your Life, and Lockdown And Frack Off, the political will and the sensational go willingly hand in hand with beating off the blues of our times.
To acknowledge the absurd is to defy the unknown chaos that stalks our balance, and in what better company could this be attained than that which Madness supplies.
Ian D. Hall