CHUMBAWAMBA

"Who put the 'u' in the Wamba?"

Years active: Genres: Related artists:
1982 - 2012 Post-punk, art rock, pop/rock, dance rock, folk, indie pop n/a

Line-up: This is going to be one of those chaotic kudzu paragraphs, courtesy of Chumbawamba always having had a bit of a collective feel to it and various members moving from 'unofficial' to 'official' members and back depending on the era. To summarise to some degree, then: the original 1982 starting line-up consisted of Allan "Boff" Whalley (vocals, guitar), Danbert Nobacon (vocals), Lou Watts (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and "Midge" (drums), and shortly expanded with Alice Nutter (vocals, trumpet), Dunstan Bruce (vocals, bass, percussion, turntables), Harry Hamer (originally guitar and vocals) and Mavis Dillon (bass, vocals, horns). Midge left in 1985 and Hamer picked up the drums. In 1992 Paul Greco joins on bass while Dillon moves to the horn section until he leaves in the mid-1990s; when Greco too leaves in the late 1990s, the bass duties are picked up by Neil Ferguson, who's been doing engineering, production and additional studio instrumentation for the band since 1982 but finally gets promoted to full membership status. The 90s line-up is completed in 1996 when Jude Abbott joins (vocals, horns). In 2004 Nobacon, Nutter, Hamer and Bruce leave as the band turns into a quartet and moves to its final folk era, later further augmented by Phil Moody (keyboards, vocals). Got all that? This isn't even everyone who's contributed to the albums on a regular basis and all I'm going to say is that the table of line-up chronology in Wikipedia is a godsend if you want to have an understanding of who's been in and out.

Over my years in internet music spaces, it has been nice to see that Chumbawamba's reputation has grown from "the one hit wonder band from the 90s with the drinking song", to "the one hit wonder band from the 90s with the drinking song, but also with a fascinating and vastly branching 30-year career in which that one hit is just a random blip." It's now common knowledge that there is so much more to the story of Chumbawamba than their mainstream reputation would assume... but I still see very few people actually go in and listen to any of the rest; nor is their influence rarely touched upon by music critics at large. For the wider world at large their three-decade-long history is still a matter of neat trivia, rather than a treasure vault waiting to be opened. What a shame that is - there are few artists whose career is as fascinating as the Chumbas'.

Chumbawamba are frequently described as anarchist punks, and that's true - but it's also an oversimplification, and was so even back in 1982 when the band were formed by members of a bunch of other punk bands coming together under a new project. They were punk in the purest musical sense too, of course, but they were also always way more than just that. Few punk bands after all feature a keyboard player (among 6-7 other members) on their very first scrappy demo EP, and the rhythm section in particular were always a lot more post-punk with the groove-heavy drums and swanky bass that was as melodic and funky as it was muscular and primal. The band's early EPs and singles already demonstrated their high ambitions: where the unifying concept was as important as the music, and where the sharp and acerbic messages were best served with hooks made out of pure pop. They were just as full of grit and Thatcher-era anger as any of their peers, but even listening to the prehistoric demos and singles it's clear that they were always going to grow into something beyond the confinements of the scene they were in.

And grow they did. Chumbawamba's history is full of sudden swerves and stylistic swings which form a melting pot of radical experimentation. By their 1986 debut album they had already almost fully moved out of the punk scene musically and headed into a genre-blending territory where any sound could be punk in their hands. In the early 1990s they discovered samplers and dance music, and the deft groove under their songs found a new form to flourish with. In the late 1990s the band signed up with EMI (who they had been busy slagging off all across their independent days) and embraced their pop side, intentionally creating some of their overtly catchiest music but using it as a vehicle to criticise the very system they were now taking advantage of (in more ways than one - the "Tubthumping" royalties funded many anti-capitalist movements). Once they parted ways with EMI they set up their own label and began to explore interpretations of folk music until finally they simply went full-on folk - because, to paraphrase Todd in the Shadows, they were punks who got old and that's just what happens. That already is a huge stylistic range to cover but it barely even begins to scratch what happens within the albums themselves, where stylistic tributes, genre experiments and blends of everything they've learned to date come to life under whatever production aesthetic the band have called home that given day. Chumbawamba were always shifting and moving, and that results in a very curious thing: it's difficult to summarise what exactly Chumbawamba sound like, but they never sound anything but Chumbawamba, imprinting their very distinct personality (personalities to be even more accurate, courtesy of their multiple co-lead vocalists) into everything they do. You always know what the Chumbawamba sound is like, even if it is difficult to describe and impossible to define.

The one consistent thing across their varied discography is their continued commitment to concept albums, and that's one of the most fun aspects of the band. The majority of their albums have an overarching theme or a particular center of inspiration, and more often than not it's evident that the theme came first and the songs afterwards. They're rarely subtle about it either - Chumbawamba albums typically come with extensive liner notes which not only lay down the lyrics (often political, always commenting) but also lay down the inspiration for the album and sometimes even break down each song's specific point or message. It means that it's easy to gather the background and understand the politics, even if you're separated from the original context - something that was extremely useful when a young Finn found himself attracted to the band's music with zero clue about British (or global!) politics. The downside of this approach is that it's sometimes very evident that the message came before the song and you can find plenty of examples of somewhat weaker material propped up only because it fit the theme, but I personally think that's a trade-off I can live with - each Chumba album is its own deep world to investigate and research, and it's an aspect I've particularly come to appreciate with age. I got into Chumbawamba when I was a teen purely because I thought the songs were great and the vocals were captivating, and though it was easy to figure out how political the music was it was also easy for me to more or less not pay attention to it. Now that I'm older and I have lived in the UK for a long while, it's a different kind of fascinating to dip into the essays and lyric sheet and effectively see history unfold (and remain the same in parts...). So much of it is also specifically queer history, given the band's vocal defense of LGBT+ rights right from the very beginning (their very second single was against the anti-homosexual law that Thatcher had introduced), and that is powerful in its own way for someone under the rainbow umbrella - honestly, again referencing how no one seems to bother looking into the band's music any further, the "be gay do crimes" contingent would absolutely love these guys if anyone gave them a second pass.

But as said, admittedly none of that was ever a reason why Chumbawamba were one of the earliest bands I became a fan of once I had started taking the first steps into full-blown music nerdiness - it was, simply as it is, the power of the music itself. The thing that many artists who focus so heavily on being a spokesperson for important matters often forget is that the easiest way to get the message through is to make it stick in someone's head - and you could never, ever call Chumbawamba unmemorable. There's the infectious vocal melodies (be it Nobacon and Dunst's spitfire pseudo-raps and sprachesange, the others' more softer and welcoming tones or the occasional impassioned shouting), the tight-as-hell rhythm sections and the aggressively catchy riffs, usually all coming at you at the same time, all on top of sharp and precise songwriting - underneath all the big hullabaloo about their non-musical accolades and traits, it's rarely discussed just how wonderfully good musicians and songwriters they are. Most evident in their slower songs and the subtler material that would crop up in the autumn years, but even those big loud rock songs and punk kick-alongs have an immediate pull because of how the songwriting wraps you up around its little finger. That is Chumbawamba's secret deadly weapon: that behind all the bravado and borderline over-the-top confrontational antics, there are some real melodic masterminds that make a powerful musical act.

There aren't many discographies quite like Chumbawamba's. There's a lot of unevenness at places, for sure - but on the flipside you have one of the most unique, ever-shifting and personality-rich discographies around that's a riot to have explored, never knowing exactly what's about to happen around the corner and frequently having any preconceived notions and ideas challenged. And there is, at the minimum, a lot more to it than "Tubthumping".

Discography gaps: The original 1988 version of English Rebel Songs, the Revenger's Tragedy OST, the live albums, a couple of the CD singles. I'm also not touching on the old pre-1986 demo albums and EPs etc.

Main Chronology:

CD Singles:

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Main Chronology

PICTURES OF STARVING CHILDREN SELL RECORDS

Released: Rating: Key tracks:
1986 7 "How to Get Your Band on Television", "Unilever", "More Whitewashing"

1) How to Get Your Band on Television; 2) British Colonialism & the BBC; 3) Commercial Break; 4) Unilever; 5) More Whitewashing; 6) An Interlude: Beginning to Take It Back; 7) Dutiful Servants & Political Masters; 8) Coca-Colanisation; 9) ...and in a Nutshell; 10) Invasion

A half hour manifesto on Western colonisation, light on stand-out songs but intended as one solid statement - and it works as one.

By 1986 Chumbawamba had been busy and active for a good few years, with a combination of singles, EPs, compilation contributions and demo albums bearing their name already out in the world. Thus the band arrive at their de facto debut album with a fairly formed idea of what it is they want to do and how to go about it. What inspired them to finally take a full-length approach was the mid-80s trend of Western artists forking out charity efforts for third world countries, culminating in 1985's Live Aid - in Chumbawamba's eyes, a self-promotional attempt of the Western world to wash their hands clean from the mess they had caused in those countries to begin with by way of feel-good "activism" rather than systematic repairs of messes they caused (which is a fair and accurate point, and not that much has changed in the fourty years since...). Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records is, well, all about that: a conceptual cut-through and a critical stab at the topic that starts from Live Aid and moves to examine the wider topic at hand afterwards, taking shots at big corporations and contemporary politicians as they go. With a hefty topic like this, it's no wonder they felt that they couldn't contain everything they had to say on the subject within just one single or an EP.

"How to Get Your Band on Television" is not just the album's opening track but its summarised thesis, an eight and a half minute multi-suite overture of sorts that pulls the album together: it lays out the roots for the rest of the album both musically and lyrically, advancing from a horn-accentuated slow build of an intro that sets the scene like a faithful narrator to the cheekily jubilant post-punk groove that kicks off the song proper. It's ambitious, dynamic, both aggressively sharp-barbed and endlessly entertaining at the same time - and also so very Chumbawamba. "How to Get Your Band on Television" not only starts off the Chumbawamba album discography but it lays the groundwork for the first two decades of the band's career. It's also, most importantly, a great song: one fine enough to hold the weight of in practice being the album's mouthpiece. By the time Nobacon's vocals get downright fervorous with spit and spite about crucifying Cliff Richard it's become practically exhalarating, and so it's the job of the somber outro to reframe the song to remind of the gravitas of the message; every step along the way, the band pull the listener in through a combination of infectious energy and impish hooks (the "ch-ch-charity" singalongs deserve a shoutout especially). You get the feeling that this song is basically the reason that the album exists to begin with and it packs a heck of a punch to begin things with - a real tour de force album 1 track 1.

The rest of Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records comes across a little bit like supplemental material to the main manifesto of its opener. Thematically each one picks a particular angle to view the central themes through, while the songs are shorter, more prone to stylistic exercises and frequently eschewing musical weight altogether in favour of the message in the more interlude-esque moments ("Commercial Break", "... And in a Nutshell"). Even the actual song titled "An Interlude" refers to its role as an aside from the central narrative (using Nicaragua as an example of the third world fighting back), while musically its jaunty sing-song folk is one of the more accomplished and fleshed-out compositions here. Many of the songs are composed of bits and pieces that are spliced together more or less haphazardly, avoiding conventional structures but in a way where it feels like it's simply because the band didn't think there was a point in giving every idea that came to their heads its own separate title - nothing ties together the hectic disco beat of the first half of "Unilever" with the atmospheric and keyboard-swept second half apart from the lyrical theme, and other bands would likely have explored each of these musical ideas further rather than leaving them as they are and welding them together. "Dutiful Servants & Political Masters" and "Coca-Colanisation" in particular both consist of short minute-ish musical segments (a sales pitch on top of a bouncy little organ abruptly shifting into the album's angriest out-and-out punk breakdown on the former, moving to a jaunty horn-accentuated instrumental and an extended vocal sample of a Coke advert in the latter) and because the two tracks segue together, you're left with the impression that the division into two songs in the tracklist is more for aesthetic reasons than for treating these pieces as individual works. The overall sentiment is that this all intended to be listened to as one complementary suite rather than songs that necessarily stand out on their own two feet; a sentiment underlined by the lyrical callbacks as well, with multiple songs starting with "I am the boss of the BBC/wife of the boss of the company/etc" kind of introductionary line as an example.

That isn't to say that there aren't any other song-songs here or that tracks wouldn't jump out. "More Whitewashing" in particular is a genuine stand-out constructed around a repetition of anticipation-building verses and the jubilantly jagged choruses that are almost anthemic in their delivery, until the snare-rolling outro (which here sounds like a logical escalation rather than another sudden swerve) takes over; the early EP cut "Invasion" is also re-worked to serve as the narrative's grand conclusion and as such forms an appropriately grand stand-off of furious ranting and cascading guitars, its open frustration a fitting mirror to the opener's cheeky giddiness now that the last half an hour spent with these issues has left the blood boiling. They're the exception to the rule though, freak coincidences rather than anything necessarily intended to live outside this particular context. But it's all about the context, really: Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records was intended as a response to something very specific, rather than to be an album in the more traditional sense of separately conceived songs brought together under unified design. And that's fine, because Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records hangs tightly as a singular 30-minute presentation which has been cut into chapters as an afterthought, like a DVD scene selection highlighting key scene changes - it's an engaging piece of work in its entirety, keen to make a point while also featuring a musical adventurousness and a knack for unexpected hooks that keeps it flowing smoothly. The lack of a more focused songwriting approach does mean it gets overshadowed by many of its peers in the same discography, but it's a genuinely interesting record in itself; best maybe described as a statement of intent, rather than a conventional album.

Physically: I own this as part of a reissue called First 2, which combines the first two albums into a single disc. The liner notes include an introductionary note from the band, the lyrics for the album and a set of notes scattered across the lyrics to elaborate on the topics and points presented. As with many Chumbawamba albums the liner notes really help to build the wider picture, and as such as are invaluable even though the presentation here is quite minimalistic. But I'm glad we have the reissue in the first place.

[Reviewed: 14/09/2025]

NEVER MIND THE BALLOTS

Released: Rating: Key tracks:
May 1987 6 "Always Tell the Voter What the Voter Wants to Hear", "Come on Baby (Let's Do the Revolution)", "Mr Heseltine Meets His Public"

1) Always Tell the Voter What the Voter Wants to Hear; 2) Come on Baby (Let's Do the Revolution); 3) The Wasteland; 4) Today's Sermon; 5) Ah-Men; 6) Mr Heseltine Meets His Public; 7) The Candidates Find Common Ground; 8) ...Here's the Rest of Your Life

A quickly put-together follow-up from a band already keen to move on from what they were following up from.

Never Mind the Ballots arrives a scant year after the debut album, having been written, recorded and released in a rush in order to coincide with the 1987 general election in the UK. The hot topic this time is, naturally, the state of the UK politics and particularly its politicians: as far as the Chumbas are concerned, all the parties have become just as bad and - crucially - hypocritical as one another, and so despite the Thatcherite era this finds its release in the band are aiming their shots at all sides. There isn't a slant here that's more nuanced than pointing fingers at spineless and corrupt politicians regardless of alignment - and to be honest, they likely didn't even have the time to look at things more deeply than that. Unfortunately, it is its rushed nature that has come to define the album.

The main point of critique I had about Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records was that it was a concept-first, music-later kind of affair and you could tell which parts of the tracklist were clearly there to fill the thematic gaps and which were composed as songs first and foremost. The irony is that Never Mind the Ballots is sort of the opposite, and it ends up being the weaker album overall. The concept isn't quite as tight this time around, with "Always Tell the Voter What the Voter Wants to Hear" more or less driving in the point in the first three minutes of the album and the rest of the record is slightly at loss as to where to go from there; best exemplified by the middle section of "Today's Sermon" / "Ah-Men" which ponders the compromising machinations around the suffragette movement with a side of incongruent religion, which is a slight out of time and place with the rest of the album. On the flipside, apart from the interlude "Today's Sermon" all the other seven songs stand wholly as individual compositions and even the shortest ("Come on Baby" at 1:39) sounds like a fully-fledged track rather than a snippet stuck on the side of another snippet. But the band simultaneously sound like they've stretched themselves too thin: case in point, after "Wasteland" there's two other songs which feature its main motif but it comes a touch too close to just recycling a musical passage in lack of other material. The clearest example is the over 13-minute "...Here's the Rest of Your Life" has no genuine reason to be that long once its climactic and heartfelt "I hate..." litany (the moment where the chaotic joker facade drops and the genuine shock and disgust at the state of things take centre stage) has finished and there's this half a song's worth of the same brief and not particularly interesting musical loop being endlessly repeated. Usually these long, album-closing jam-esque grand finales make a big point about why they're locked onto a particular groove, but in this case it really does just feel like padding all the way down where no one's particularly excited about actually staying in the groove.

There's an argument that this should've been an EP instead of being forced to go full-length (not a format the band were unfamiliar with, after all) and what a solid EP it would have actually made. "Always Tell the Voter..." is Chumbawamba to a T: manic, exciting, piercing but also fun, not to mention infuriatingly catchy (guess which song's been playing in my head throughout this review re-listen cycle). "Come on Baby" is a short and snappy explosion with a quiet-loud dynamic where the quiet bits wind up all the tension and the loud parts unleash it in a flurry of horn stabs, chaotic guitars and hectic drums. "Mr Heseltine Meets His Public" is the most outwardly melodic track of the lot, and it's the gentler parts amidst the post-punk thrust in particular which strike as some of the album's more captivating parts; "The Candidates Find Common Ground" follows it right up with a final executive summary of points raised, coming to a triumphant conclusion with those already-signature trumpets of the band uplifting the song. A solid four-song outing without padding ("Here's the Rest of Your Life", "Today's Sermon"), without half-hearted punk throwbacks ("Ah-Men", though the machine gun rhythm vocals are great), and without "The Wasteland" which somehow sounds both overwrought and underbaked at the same time despite being arguably the most ambitious song of the lot; all tracks that are fine, really, but also demonstrate in different ways that the band struggled to pull together a cohesive piece of work.

In the liner notes to the First 2 reissue the band notes that by this point their "love affair with fast loud music was almost at an end", and that statement cuts right into the dilemma of Never Mind the Ballots. Chumbawamba had already abandoned all notion of being a strictly punk band and they were already testing the limits of where post-punk could get up to, but they had a cause they felt committed to respond to and a record to make. Rather than a grand last hoorah for the first era of the band, Never Mind the Ballots is the proof in the pudding that it was time to take those exploratory notions further and commit to something completely new. It's the album of theirs that is most likely to fall through the cracks completely for even the seasoned fan, as even if you disagree more firmly with some of the later albums they are at least more, well, memorable. Never Mind the Ballots is an easy listen if you enjoy the band's antics in the slightest and that's its key redeeming feature, but it has the least to say for itself out of anything in the band's back catalogue both stylistically and in stand-out material. Physically: Like with the debut, I own this as part of First 2. Even the liner notes, presumably carried over from the original release, are indicative that there was just less time to pull things together - only the lyrics and a brief introductionary message to highlight the subject matter and provide some insight not apparent in the lyrics themselves, with no added commentary for the actual songs this time around.

[Reviewed: 23/09/2025]

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