Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
One Step Beyond…for a group as universally beloved as Madness, whose record, so to speak, needs no explanation, just enough to know that in our lifetimes they appeared and blew people’s minds with their infectious music and consummate wit.
There has never really been a band such as Madness, and likely the fact is that there will never be again, and that in a way is good, because it means in the decades to come, those men of humour, insight, style, and songs that prick the conscious of the listener will be truly respected as one of the pioneers of their craft from the late 20th Century.
And yet it will surely be an album from 2009, a decade after the last studio album, more than twenty years after the golden era slowly drew the curtains away from ska-pop drive, that they will judged most upon, for in The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, Madness’ finest hour is one to savour, and in its vinyl reissue, the vaudeville meets progressive narrative, the comic underscore is perfectly announced, and the theatre of intelligent belligerence and skilful jocularity is a passion not found across their entire discography.
This sensational release, arguably the finest in a long-standing career, is now, if possible, given extra grace in its powerful punch; one step beyond indeed. For alongside superb tracks that exemplify this London centric insight, songs such as Sugar and Spice, Forever Young, Dust Devil, the fear of boredom in relationships so perfectly captured in On The Town, the excellent Clerkenwell Polka, more songs, an entire side appears; a lost bonus perhaps in which if on film would be the director’s cut, the full face of London’s finest.
This is the Towers of London, it is the modern counterpart to Quadrophenia, it is the side-by-side elegance of The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, it is a piece of history as vital to the story of the capital, and to the nation as a whole as Waterloo Station, of Lords on a warm summer’s day, it is the underbelly, the Sunday morning amateur football on Hackney Marshes; The Liberty Of Norton Folgate is the epitome and the fury of the Madness back catalogue, and in its full length feature it is the one that will be forever the defining moment of the entire band. Glorius, entrancing, fun, melancholic, driven, there is nothing finer to wrap your ears around.
Ian D. Hall