Drummer Daniel ‘Woody’ Woodgate hit it pretty much on the head earlier this year when he cracked; “Why did we waste time copying other people when we had this great stuff inside ourselves that we had to get out?”
For The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, follow up to 2005’s covers album The Dangermen Sessions Vol. 1, Madness have restored themselves to the full Nutty Boys line-up with original producing team of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. Almost three years in the making, the album is a piece of pure musical storytelling. 14 frenzied tracks take the listener on a tour of a distorted London, crawling through its sewers and over its walls to go boozing with the gang This kind of nostalgia should be wholly irrelevant, but it has real power on the record, explored through countless instruments and beloved frontman Suggs’ menacing vocals (which, by the way, sound equally good scatting on the ragtime jive of ‘Clerkenwell Polka’ and taunting the listener on the epic 10-minute title-track). This complex collection of songs was born to be a soundtrack to a day’s bunking off school (be warned; the chorus of ‘Idiot Child’ may bring about an involuntary urge to play stickball in the street and throw rocks at birds’ nests).
A stew of urban scalwaggery; a debaucherous ska operetta; rich in sound if a little exhausting in length, The Liberty Of Norton Folgate is still every bit a Madness album (note the affectionate ‘NW5’ and ‘Forever Young’s dirty guitar solo) – just one with more music hall theatrics than anything they’ve offered thus far. One of their finest records to date.