The Persecuted: Britainicana

The second album from the band project fronted by Black * Scarr’s Johnny Black again offers a series of playfully caustic observations on contemporary British life, except this time round the sound often has a harder, rockier edge tempering its country persuasions. Case in point the opening I Think We Need To Talk About Kevin with its stabbing guitar Clash influences, borrowing the title of Leonard Shriver’s novel for a lyric about modern youth’s unhealthy cyber obsessions. There’s a moody blues-rock feel on the Desperate Housewife too, a snapshot of domestic depression and a dead end life for which there no mother’s little helpers, that comes with a snarling guitar solo and, likewise, the percussion-driven Natasha Kaplansky Keeps Singing The Blues, a kindred musical spirit perhaps to Happy Mondays as Black lists the many, many downsides of growing old  and “getting checked for lumps and bumps.”

Indeed, quite a few of the songs here deal with the advancing years.  One of several twangsome numbers, Mid-Life Crisis pretty much sums itself up in its tale of a married man who “buys a motorbike and grows a goatee beard”  in a doomed attempt to recapture his lost youth.  Written in response to how the ranks of those rock stars we grew up with are gradually thinning out, soaked with pedal steel, Dropping Like Flies is a honky tonk tune to which those of a certain age will ruefully relate.

But since you can’t hold back the years, then there’s no point moping about it, thus 90s Days To Live a choogling rockabilly riffing blues about being given a terminal diagnosis and resolving to go out in flames.

There are, of course, also a clutch of songs about matters of the heart other than how long it will keep beating.  Wailing harmonica and ringing twangy guitars are the order of the day for the Beatles-ish Crazy Jane (And The Lovesick Fool), an influence that spills over into the skip along Revolution.  The tale of a bloke too much of a coward to dump his girl in person, I Just Couldn’t Say It To Your Face offers more country twang while they take the pace down for a brace of ballads with the chiming melody of Pushing Me Away’s  poignant tale of a relationship in crisis and, shifting the theme, the organ-backed Prove The Doubters Wrong, a defiant song (with a guitar line that I suspect nods to  Suspicious Minds) about determining to  not live up to everyone’s low expectations, even if that’s easier said than done.

However, they save the best for last and the five-minute Byrdsian  circling jangle of Death On The Dance Floor, an account of the humiliation of being given the cold shoulder in trying to chat up some girl at the local dance that will resonate with many, though in the last verse before the lengthy play out they do at least vicariously get their own back.

Ignore the somewhat clunky album title, this is up there with the very best of homegrown Americana and, if they could get some sort of national radio or TV play to provide the incentive to gig beyond their London stomping grounds, they would deservedly develop the following they assuredly warrantt.

The Persecuted - "BRITAINICANA"
Dial M For Music Records

A Series of Very British Melodramas Labelled With Love.

It seems like a lifetime since I first heard The Persecuted’s self-titled 2015 debut album which I loved and quaintly described as ‘Gastro-Pub Rock’, so I was giddy with excitement when I opened the envelope and read the handwritten accompanying letter (remember them kids?) that came with this, their second disc BRITAINICARNA. That was two days ago and if I tell you I sat outside my house last night at midnight, after a ten hour shift at work just so I could listen to the last minute of Pushing Me Away you will understand how much I love this one too

Opening track I Think We Need To Talk About Kevin begins in much the same way the previous album ended; a complex slice of family life encapsulated in a three minute Country-Pop song. Don’t get frightened by the word ‘Pop’ …..it’s only because the Persecuted use catchy melodies and actual ‘tunes’ to accompany their Kitchen Sink melodramas. ‘Kevin is about a teenager who sits alone in his bedroom ‘wacked out on cyber porn’ and his parents worry for him. Does that ring any bells with anyone? Hmmmmm; it’s a sad state of affairs but the Persecuted manage to tell this gripping story with grace and black humour. Baring in mind the state of the world at the moment a song entitled Revolution could be quite scary and angry; but in these lads hands it’s a sad lament about someone like me (or you) who just shouts at the TV and pretty much leaves it at that.
While there’s an Alt. Country type ‘vibe’ to the Persecuted their sound and songs are quintessentially English, with absolutely no pretence at being

American like so many of their contemporaries. There is a definite Country ‘Twang’ to I Just Couldn’t Say It To Your face; and the theme of a coward trying to get out of a relationship is universal, as are all of the stories here; and Johnny Black’s droll voice makes it the very essence of what they have dubbed ‘Britainicana’. Although these songs are perfect for AOR Radio; I doubt they will ever get played on that medium which is a loss to people everywhere; especially if Dropping Like Flies gets lost in the midst of time. While we’ve all moved on this ode to the death of David Bowie captures the feeling of embodiment seeing Ziggy on TOTP that first night gave a whole generation then 40 years later the utter sadness at the Dame’s passing.

There’s a song here called Desperate Housewife that is disorienting in the way a man articulately manages to capture the sense of loss and decline that a young woman/mother feels in her two bedroom flat. The only other song I can equate it to is Mothers Little Helper by The Rolling Stones from half a century ago and I defy you not to hear this and not think of someone in your circle of family and friends and then have a tear in your eye.
Those Twangtastic guitars rip it up again on Mid Life Crisis; with Echoes of The Waco Brothers the Persecuted nod to Chuck Berry with the chorus of “Go Johnny Go!” as they sing about a married man who “buys a motorbike and grows a goatee beard” as he searches for his long lost youth; but only finds heartache. If I ell you I checked the album to see if this was a Springsteen/Bragg co-write (it’s not btw) you will realise what it sounds like.

On a similar tip is the quirkilly titled Natasha Kaplansky Keeps Singing The Blues; where the singer is fed up with “getting checked for lumps and bumps….but still waiting for a heart attack” and because of all of the bad news he’s stopped reading the papers and watching the news because ” Natasha Kaplansky Keeps Singing The Blues.” Again it’s a Universal topic; but given a very British theme, especially when Black lists all the fun and food stuffs he’s no longer allowed.

Where do I start in picking a ‘RMHQ Favourite’ when just about every song here resonates with me in some way; my first choice was Pushing Me Away but Mrs. Magpie may read this review so I will toss a coin between Proving The Doubters Wrong of which 90% really, really could be about me! And the other is probably the Byrds inspired Death on the Dance-floor which closes the album. A very modern take on a life long fear for me and I presume many men out there. The Persecuted are a bunch of musicians based in East London who all have other jobs to pay the rent; and sadly have to do this malarkey for love alone, which is a huge shame as the quality of songwriting is exceptional and musicianship this good only comes from years of hard work and I, for one would like to see them get even 10% of the fame and fortune they deserve.

Released May 1st 2017

Much like you, I’d never heard of the Persecuted before receiving this, their debut album but now I’ve played it to death over a week’s constant rotation in the car, I can’t wait to see them play these songs live in either a scruffy back room of a pub or at a massive festival; I’m not fussed which.

It took a while for the penny to drop; but if this had been an old fashioned LP the first side would be a collection of quintessentially English kitchen sink dramas a la Squeeze in their early days and when you turn it over the second side is the missing link between the end of the Mekons and the first Waco Brothers album (and I don’t use those band names lightly!).

Album opener Slash My Wrists (W11 3DA) is an attention grabber of a tale of small town or Inner City boredom; where too much to drink is the all too easy solution to young people’s woes; and this is followed by Popping Pills a jaunty but harrowing tale; not akin to the Rolling Stones Mother’s Little Helper, about a housewife’s dependency on ‘pills’ to get her through the day.

Little Britain offers a weary take on the Chav Culture (Trailer Trash?) that is taking over too many of our housing estates and the helplessness ‘nice people’ feel.

My second side opens with City of Fallen Angels (CV10 9HR) which follows on from the first couple of tracks; scarily touching on the part of ‘broken Britain’ that gets forgotten about.

The last few tracks are a lot more up-tempo; still ‘stories’ with an English spine but the tunes are now more Country flavoured and ‘edgy’ in a Waco Brothers way that I alluded to earlier and in singer Johnny Black they have an earthier version of ‘Jonboy’ Langford from the Wacos/Mekons.

No Country album would be complete without a sad love song and that’s what this ends with; Red, White and Blues which has all the hallmarks of an end of show sing along.  

 If only we could shave 30 years off each band member’s birth certificate and 6 inches off their waist band and they would be perfect for the New Wave of Student bands that are sweeping the Nation at the moment; but sadly the foursome are all men of a ‘certain age’  and their signature tune (and mine?) I Wish I was Still Eighteen sums up what it must be like to still be in a Rock and Roll band in your forties.

 Review By Mike Davies for FOLK RADIO UK

The Persecuted – The Persecuted

 Having only recently released the sophomore album by Black Scarr, singer-songwriter Johnny Black returns with the debut by his band project The Persecuted, a four piece playing what they’ve termed Britainicarna. Also featuring Brad Way on bass, Steve Bottcher on guitar and mandolin and Mark Skeggs on drums, with added contributions from Emma Scarr on violin, it’s not too far removed from the duo’s output in that it’s packed with infectious folk-rock melodies and hooks, singalong choruses and Black’s insightful and generally caustically humorous observations on life in modern Britain.

 The album opens with the harmonica wailing Slash My Wrists (E11 3DA), the postcode specifically referencing High Road, Leytonstone with Black the Dylan to Frank Turner’s Springsteen on a number that knowingly nods to Desolation Row in both its melody and references to ambulances and the circus now leaving town as well as painting a depressing picture of an area characterised by drunks, junk food litter, vagrants, broken needles, teenage pickpockets and charity shops. Suffice to say, you won’t be hearing this playing in many local estate agents.

 Its depressing vision of a nation in decline extends to several numbers. The acoustic slow waltzing City of Fallen Angels (CV10 9HR) switches post code to Spring Hill Road in Nuneaton, the town where Black grew up, as he sings about Friday nights with Asbos shining bright, kids carrying carving knives and getting “a drunken shag for a bag of chips and a shish kebab” while the country boogie Little Britain features characters like the bloke with “stab wounds in his stomach and a swastika tattoo” and the girl with “two unwanted babies and venereal disease”, prompting a chorus of “makes you proud and victorious glorious, happy and glorious, thank God they don’t live next door to me.”

 Elsewhere the Byrdsian jangle of Popping Pills addresses a generation numbed by prescription drugs and The Outcast offers a snapshot of an alienated computer game addict teenager “switched to overload getting ready to explode” as he watches violent movies and reads porno mags, while in the equally twangy Hammersmith Broadway its murder suspect declares “they’ll never find me guilty because they haven’t got the proof”, adding in the catchy chorus that “I never go out looking for trouble, I’ve got better ways to get my thrills, I’ve never been to Hammersmith Broadway and I haven’t got the guts to kill.”

 It’s not all social comment country, though. Plangent ballad One More Chance, a tremolo ringing I Want You, the rockabilly White Cliffs of Dover, the Johnny Cash-styled I’m Sorry For Everything I’ve Done all centre around screwed up relationships while the shanty swaying Red White & Blues is a post-boom downer and, showing hints of The Monkees in its reverb guitar lines, I Wish I Was Still Eighteen echoes the growing old themes of the Black Scarr album, albeit adding that “it’s never too late to rock n roll.”

 At present, the band, like the duo, aren’t much known outside of their North East London stomping grounds, but, with the help of a tour van and some taste-shaping media exposure, they both have the potential to attract far wider and bigger audiences already tuned in to the likes of Turner, Chris T-T and Beans On Toast.

One Man's View On The World Of Americana, Blues, Country, Alt Country & Folk Music

Review By The Rocking Magpie

The Persecuted – The Persecuted

Much like you, I’d never heard of the Persecuted before receiving this, their debut album but now I’ve played it to death over a week’s constant rotation in the car, I can’t wait to see them play these songs live in either a scruffy back room of a pub or at a massive festival; I’m not fussed which.

It took a while for the penny to drop; but if this had been an old fashioned LP the first side would be a collection of quintessentially English kitchen sink dramas a la Squeeze in their early days and when you turn it over the second side is the missing link between the end of the Mekons and the first Waco Brothers album (and I don’t use those band names lightly!).

Album opener Slash My Wrists (W11 3DA) is an attention grabber of a tale of small town or Inner City boredom; where too much to drink is the all too easy solution to young people’s woes; and this is followed by Popping Pills a jaunty but harrowing tale; not akin to the Rolling Stones Mother’s Little Helper, about a housewife’s dependency on ‘pills’ to get her through the day.

Little Britain offers a weary take on the Chav Culture (Trailer Trash?) that is taking over too many of our housing estates and the helplessness ‘nice people’ feel.

My second side opens with City of Fallen Angels (CV10 9HR) which follows on from the first couple of tracks; scarily touching on the part of ‘broken Britain’ that gets forgotten about.

The last few tracks are a lot more up-tempo; still ‘stories’ with an English spine but the tunes are now more Country flavoured and ‘edgy’ in a Waco Brothers way that I alluded to earlier and in singer Johnny Black they have an earthier version of ‘Jonboy’ Langford from the Wacos/Mekons.

No Country album would be complete without a sad love song and that’s what this ends with; Red, White and Blues which has all the hallmarks of an end of show sing along.

If only we could shave 30 years off each band member’s birth certificate and 6 inches off their waist band and they would be perfect for the New Wave of Student bands that are sweeping the Nation at the moment; but sadly the foursome are all men of a ‘certain age’  and their signature tune (and mine?) I Wish I was Still Eighteen sums up what it must be like to still be in a Rock and Roll band in your forties.