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Madness - The Liberty Of Norton Folgate
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Send "Madness " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Musicomh |
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Lord, we are truly blessed. The full line-up of Madness reunited with original producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley on their best batch of songs since The Rise & Fall. Add in sessions at Liam Watson's Toe Rag studios and this is truly manna from heaven. The Liberty Of Norton Folgate is Madness's lengthiest album to date and also boasts a 10-minute title track. The latter would have got the nutty boys booted off stage in their '80s heyday and shows how far they have progressed in their musical maturity. After the musical homage to their ska roots that was 2005's The Dangermen Sessions Vol. 1, this album is a hymn to Madness's beloved London. The title refers to the street in London connecting Bishopsgate with Shoreditch High Street, or more specifically the ancient liberty (or parish) of Norton Folgate that now encompasses the Spitalfields district. The fact that the area was a haven for artists and playwrights obviously rang deep for the members of Madness....full text |
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| Uncut |
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As the Specials reunion – reunion, my copious arse – gets more publicity, one can only hope that this far more interesting 2-Tone-related event will get more coverage. Because Madness not only keep reforming (with all their old members, including their best songwriter), they also release new records with original songs on them. And now, in 2009, at a point in their history when you’d confidently expect them to be creeping about the gaff in elderly slippers looking for their reading glasses, Madness have instead made a really good album. Ambitious, tuneful, exciting, wise, and with a finale that kicks them up a level into an undreamed-of musical dimension. Over the years, Madness have had quite a few false-ish starts. There was The Madness, a very odd semi-reunion album. There was Suggs’ skaraoke solo album, there was the Dangermen collection… all target-missers on various levels. But The Liberty Of Norton Folgate – a title which makes sense in context but is otherwise unlikely to be jamming up the ringtone sites – is Madness in both their pomp and their prime. Like most grabs for reheated glory, it sounds like their entire career in one go. There are echoes of melancholy stompers like “The Sun And The Rain”; there’s the rocksteady, bass-heavy (lots of bass on this album!) “Forever Young”, which is a slightly less-grey cousin of “Grey Day”. Any number of brilliant Madness character sketches are recalled in the splendid “Idiot Child” (which also has the spectral quality of the post-Mike Barson Mad Not Mad). But none of these stylistic revisits are retreads. “Everything” is infused with some of the best melodies of the band’s career, and everything is enthused, too. The tiredness of Keep Moving and Mad Not Mad has been replaced with an older, but fresher, sound. Songs like “Forever Young” and “Sugar And Spice” sound like singles, and should be. Everything seems to gel – the arrangements are the best ever, the production is thoughtful and smart, and the influences melded perfectly (we all know that Madness were more than the sum of Ian Dury and The Kinks, but we all chose to ignore the huge, conspicuous chunks of Motown and The Beatles also in there)....full text |
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| Guardian |
| We are London," contends Suggs on the bouncy tune of that name, which opens Madness's first studio album in a decade. Of all the bands in the capital, his sprightly survivors have a better claim than most to "be" London, and the quintessential Camden geezers' love affair with their city is still going strong. On this album, London is the backdrop for little dramas about capitalism's deleterious effects (Clerkenwell Polka), departed friends (NW5) and the East End's status as a haven for artists and eccentrics (the title track). The songs are wordy and disappointingly light on the knock 'em dead catchiness that was once their forte, but what The Liberty of Norton Folgate lacks in hit singles it makes up for in glorious ska/reggae arrangements and Suggs's perpetual chirpiness, which is laced with the bemusement of a chap who can't work out where the years went. A graceful return from the nutty "boys"....full text |
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