Levellers Live review by Rob Johnson
The ’90s music scene has been canonised and lionised so much now that anyone looking back on that decade would believe that it was rave culture, grunge and britpop and nothing else. While all three of those movements were significant, there are several bands and artists who sold millions of records, were hugely influential, and seem to have been excised from the annals of history. The Levellers are one such band. Having had a string of hit albums and singles throughout the ’90s, and having also played to a record 300,000 strong crowd whilst headlining Glastonbury, there is no denying that the Brighton band were woven into the fabric of the ’90s music scene as much as any of their peers. Judging by their recent sold out gig at Sheffield’s Electric Studios (formerly The Leadmill), the band remain as important and powerful as ever.
Any band with a legacy and a back catalogue as vast as the Levellers has a decision to make when playing live. Do we play the hits? Lean on new material? A mixture of both? Mark Chadwick and his band opt to do what most bands should do really… They simply play all of their best songs. 1991’s classic album Levelling the Land is heavily represented with classics like ‘One Way’ and ‘Another Man’s Cause’ treated like old friends. The latter sees the Sheffield crowd singing in unison to a song that deserves to be held in much higher regard by those outside of the Levellers inner circle. But that’s what makes the band so appealing. Despite continually selling out large venues for decades, they still feel like our band. A band of the people. ‘Battle for the Beanfield’, a song about the infamous brutality dished out by the police against a group of New Age travellers in ’80s Wiltshere, remains an incredible protest song, the opening riff of Hope St sounds humongous coming from Electric Studios brand spanking new sound system and ‘Fifteen Years’ – one of the best drinking songs of the ’90s – is still as insistent as ever.
Chadwick and his band don’t say much, but they still connect with the audience with the huge amount of passion that they deliver these songs with. It is clear that one of Britain’s most political bands still have that fire in their belly even if the theme of the night is one of triumphant celebration rather than anarchic disruption. Even when returning to their first album with ‘World Freak Show’, a song that is now over 25 years old, the band still deliver every word and every note as if their lives depend on it.
A chaotic run through of fan favourite ‘Dirty Davey’ brings the house down before massive single ‘What a Beautiful Day’ gets everyone on their feet dancing. The crusties still know how to move if you can get them going. The set closes out with a raucous rendition of The Riverflow – the band’s most fist-pumping, foot-stomping song, and the band leave the stage knowing that they have done their job. For a couple of hours there, on a balmy night in Sheffield, a group of anarcho-punks from Brighton convinced us that it was 1996 again. What a time to be alive.
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