There are bands and singers that you know you like but never get round to buying any of their records. Until you do and then you wonder why you didn't do it long ago. The Levellers are one such. I've just picked up One Way Of Life: The Best of the Levellers and (short title) Headlights, a live album and they are both fucking great.
What I like about the band is their sheer intensity, and the far-left political and social committment inherent in almost all of their songs. Lyrically they stand firmly in the long tradition of British left-wing folk music. Their interpretation of it is, however, firmly in the rock camp (albeit sometimes veering in the direction of folk-rock) with added fiddle. Everything is played and sung with utmost sincerity and, as I said, intensity to produce stomping intelligent anthemic rock/folk-rock, whatever. The live album is playing as I'm typing this and I keeping getting urge to jump up and punch my fist in the air as I wordlessly roar approval. Which is quite inappropriate for a 61 year old retired librarian, but there you go, that's the effect they have on me.
They might do that to you if you give them a try.
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