Reviews

Artist:Latin Quarter
Album: I (Together)
Label: Westpark
Tracks: 15
Website: https://www.latinquartermusic.com/

Formed in 1983 by Steve Skaith and Steve Jeffries, who remain the core members, their music mingling of pop, electro, rock, reggae and folk and with a largely political slant to the lyrics, written by Mike Jones, they had a UK Top 20 hit in 1986 with the re-released Radio Africa, but neither the accompanying album nor subsequent releases were able to capitalise on that initial spark, although the first three albums did fare well in Germany. They've split and reunited a couple of times in the past 25 years or so, Skaith also releasing solo albums.

Marking their 40th anniversary, they toured last year and, with a line-up that adds Mary (who shares vocals) and Ann Carewe on keyboards and cello, respectively, this is their twelfth album, a mix of new acoustic studio recordings of old songs and five live tracks from their 2021 trio tour in Germany.

It opens with 'After Maralinga', revisited in shorter form from their 1989 Swimming Against The Stream, a song about the site of the seven nuclear test carried out by the UK in Australia between 1956 and 1963 "in a place called 'Thunder", with the subsequent fall out on the indigenous population ("The affairs of a handful of natives/Are as nothing when compared with the crowns… There are at least one hundred and thirty/Though their numbers are set to expand/Who lost their health and the health of their children/Wearing British khaki on stolen land") as "the half-life lingers".

Mick and Caroline from 1987 saw the original of Negotiating With A Loaded Gun, a song about armed coercion, here a sparse piano and strings arrangement with Carewe on vocals, the same album the source of the shorter, pulsing communal action themed title track here, while from the more recent (2016) 'The Imagination Of Thieves', again driven by piano with Skaith, in a chaged register, singing the refrain, 'I Am Refugee' references the kindertransport, the Ugandan expulsions and the plight of Palestinians and remain as tragically timely today.

They don't do many love songs, but, recorded live with Carewe on lead, Another Day With You (as featured on the most recent 'Releasing The Sheep'), fits the bill nicely, albeit with a bittersweet taste, other live numbers being the avian-portent titled The Hoopoe, the drug-themed Nothing Like Velvet ("I loved Charlie Parker but you know he did us harm/Every time he left to pour that inspiration in his arm"), and the lyrically revised 'Radio Africa Continued', updated to note " So many movements went nowhere/But investment means and interest means it's harder to fight/Independence had a hidden expense" but still ending with its observation of how "the hands on the purse strings were white". The final live recording is the magnificently world-weary 'Releasing The Sheep' itself, the lines "Maybe the idea of Eden set me up to fail/And the ark and the animals/For some it was just too tall a tale… It was the meek to inherit the earth/But it seems that honour has fallen to the thieves/Open the stockades, I'm releasing the sheep" having a powerful resonance in the wake of Labour's attack on the farming community, the churchy piano-led version here extended by almost two minutes with a lengthy instrumental coda.

Elsewhere other acoustic revisitings from 2016 line up as the disillusionment-deep That's Why I Turned My Badge In with its mention of Rodney King, black lives matter and clear allusion to Trump ("They had me watch for snipers when the president rolled in/I booked a doctor's letter and went back home again/I watched him on the TV give the truth a little spin"), the similar state of America-based Equality Not Revenge from the same year that imagines a different scenario ("Never lynched as the good folk brought their kids to watch/While a black kid walks to school through a howling mob/Never had to get up and give up your seat/And a cop would probably move if you said you couldn't breathe") and, Carewe on vocals, the subtle domestic abuse themed 'Growing My Shadow' ("As I put?on the lipstick on, I see your face/Gathering behind me/Determining my place…Reflections from you/Deflections from me/Growing my shadow,?painted day after day").

From 1993's Long Pig there's the female empowerment storysong The Desert Rose ("She slapped her teacher in the face/She was radical that way/So they called her 'Poison Grace'/But she chased the name away…She took in wed-lock on the way/Aaah, but it didn't last/It came to dead-lock in a single day/And she got out fast…It's all the shifting of the dunes/Different faces - but the same old honeymoons/And where's the Montague now?/He's just he mouthpiece for the head of sales…lost along the dusty trail").

The remaining two numbers which close up the album are both new, the sinewy slow burning reggae-tinged soul and melodically tumbling chorus of 'The Easy Certainties of Bikers' with its Spaghetti Western colours ("Past the cemetery/Roaring solitary/Accelerate their cares away/An alabaster Mary/Smiling calm but wary/Til they meet again some day") and the haunting 'Back To The Well' with its mingling of climate change despair ("The great Mississippi is/But a ribbon of dust/That is frayed and torn at New Orleans/The Gulf of Mexico/Is ready to combust/From Tampa to the Philippines") and, bolstered by choral vocals, spiritual affirmation ("I will walk back to the well/And it is from the well I will drink/For the well is deep/And the water is clear/And it's so much nearer than we think").

Given the charge to the lyrics and the accessibility of the melodies, it's hard to fathom why Latin Quarter have never found the wider acclaim and respect they deserve, but, as those two songs illustrate, they continue to produce new music with something to say and the music to carry the message. Do yourself a favour and listen to them.

Mike Davies

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