- Genre: 'Punk/New Wave'
- Release Date: '27th March 2020'
Our Rating:
Ben Wood’s statement contextualising the song is informative, as he explains how “The lyrics to ‘1930s Gem’ were written during the 2011 London riots. I remember being so moved by the Tottenham Co-Op Building being enveloped in flames. It was built in 1930 and I had lived near it in London. It was totally destroyed. I wanted to write a song that was defiant but not angry.”
This resonates with me on a personal level: watching the riots unravel on TV was a step up from the Gulf War – the first war televised in real-time – it felt like we were watching civilisation collapse before our very eyes. And the riots spread – pre-emptively, as it would turn out – like a virus, from city to city. It felt like a latter-day Ballard novel playing out. It didn’t seem real. And yet it felt all too close to home.
The cover image is a testament to damage, to the song’s sad inspiration, a reminder that nothing lasts forever, that humanity is its own worst enemy, and that heritage, decades, centuries, or even millennia in the making can be lost in mere minutes. We’re all here to go.
Over a nagging, repetitive lead guitar riff, Wood and co build a chuggy punky picture of devastation over some solid, four-square trad-punk instrumentation, but also lift it with some melodic woah-hoah backing vocals, which may not be especially inventive, but are entirely fitting in context. Lively, but keeping on the right side of cheese and cliché, it’s a solid and sincere effort from a band it seems you can believe in.
