From Craig

The Aftermath of Chumbawamba

Although Monday (yesterday) was a holiday, I decided to go in to work and get some stuff done. My day was mostly unproductive, but I did get to listen to my new Chumbawamba albums that I purchased at the Canmore Folk Festival on Sunday.

I brought the discs in to work on Monday and I ripped them to the hard disk on my work machine. I never listen to CDs directly anymore... I find using software on my computer so much more convenient. I typically use XMMS as my audio client. I particularly like the 5 second jumps you can make within a song using the arrow keys.

The two albums I purchased were:

• Get On With It (Live @ Leeds, Brighton, Kendal, Cockermouth, Goole, Chesterfield, Sidmouth, Hebden Bridge & Buxton)
• A Singson and a Scrap

There are a few of the same songs appear on each albums (William Francis, By & By, Learning to Love, and Bella Ciao). Their performance at Canmore included many of the songs on the Live album.

I've been listening to the discs over the last couple of days (today and yesterday) and I am very happy with them. The songs are very easy to listen to. While some of the chord progressions are simple, the melodies are catchy to the point of being addictive. I noticed a few times over the last couple of days that I was either singing or humming a melody from one of the albums while I was standing in the elevator or walking to my afternoon class.

I've always thought that Chumbawamba were good musicians and excellent songwriters but my impressions of them has increased dramatically over the last couple of days. Their complex harmonies on Bella Ciao are hard enough to do in the studio, but they did a flawless job in performance.

I highly recommend to anyone who has the opportunity to see Chumbawamba live to do so.