“And now a song of hope / Despite despairing hearts”
The Claim are to release their first album since 1988’s ‘Boomy Tella’ via Turntable Friend Records on May 24th. Release date-wise, it’s perfection. Nothing is more British than a bank holiday, as the band they heavily influenced once sang:
“Bank holiday comes six times a year
Days of enjoyment to which everyone cheers”
Recorded at Jim Riley’s Ranscombe Studios in Rochester, they look set to reignite the Medway sound. At the heart of the original Medway boom were great pop instincts, nothing has changed.
Lead single ‘Johnny’ is the perfect link to this past. The urgency of Jam permeating their spiralling pop guitars. Meanwhile, Dave Read’s vocal hook on ‘When The Morning Comes’ chorus demonstrates pop music can emerge from even downbeat affairs. ‘Smoke and Screens’ and ‘The Haunted Pub’ is a display of pop music transcending to art. A flurry of polemic and social comment wrapped up in working class British life collides with sun-kissed production and sprightly guitar hooks. Whereas, the sparkling Grandaddy production and Bluetones' pop sheen of 'Just Too Far' is the album’s cherry on the cake. The Smiths methodology burns bright.
In 2015, Sam Duckworth (aka Get Cape Wear Cape Fly) released an EP and album under the moniker ‘Recreations’. It tapped into a feeling of alternative and lost souls along the estuary in Essex. The Claim, a five-minute hop across the Thames, has struck a similar chord. Opener ‘Johnny Kidd’s Right Hand Man’, drifts down the estuary ignored and downtrodden but never losing hope. The mod-cum-blues on ‘Estuary Greens and Blues’ recalls Blur’s ‘End of Century’ and ‘To The End’ as it drifts out to sea. So blissful is album closer 'Under Canvas', that all those sneering looks for wearing DM's or having to tolerate Farage lovers drift away into insignificance.
The Claim, despite obviously being a band of brothers, have, in Dave Read a vocalist that perhaps only Morrissey and Michael Head can rival. Unique in sound, he has the ability to find a melodic hook in unexpected places. 'Light Bending', as the guitars saunter like British Sea Power circa 'Open Season', finds a choppy Dr Feelgood vibe. Whereas, 'Mrs Jones', Read delivers his most emotive vocal on a loving character-driven tale.
The subtlety of The Claim’s polemic gently caressing the infectious melodies is truly remarkable. Blink and you’ll miss the band’s appeal to be nicer to immigrants on ‘Journey’. Couple this with the righteousness of ‘I will stand and fight / for what I know is right’ and Read’s gut-wrenching alienation on the line ‘where do I fit in…………where do I belong’, you have one of the social comments of the year. On ‘Hercules’, the nuance turns to anti-austerity polemic (“boarded up shops / Run down housing / There’s your big society”) but remains forever pop friendly. This is how to mix pop and politics without an embarrassment of excuses.
It’s been 30 years since their debut ‘Boomy Tella’. Countless fans will have pondered what might have been having they got a bigger break back then. We defy them not to see this 30 years wait as positive now. Integrity in tack, The Claim have delivered a pop music masterpiece.
