Review of Love Ire and Song Album by Frank Turner
Frank Turner
Love Ire and Song
Xtra Mile
Album Review
Anger is a wonderful emotion when recorded into well crafted songs. It has sustained folk and rock from Dylan to Uncle Tupelo. Too easily dismissed as 'protest', the sound is of an aggressive intelligence brought to bear on subjects from love to politics. Thankfully, Frank Turner keeps his great delivery focused on human observations that would humble Jarvis Cocker or Billy Bragg.
Love Ire and Song is his second album, hot on the heels of Sleep Is For The Week in 2007. Like a more vengeful Stephen Fretwell, Turner spins songs with great melody, great arrangements and a real sense of a purpose higher than filling up the CD. Love Ire and Song is the kind of music that any rock fan, punk fan or folk fan would welcome - with the observational wit that would flatter many stand-up comedians (this is, after all, an Eton schoolboy who also studied at LSE), and a sweet turn of phrase, this is an album you would always have wished Bragg could have turned out. A genuinely great British musician.
4/5
Mike Rea
Site - http://www.myspace.com/frankturner
