Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By War Poets, Independent 2023.
War Poets are a band from Minneapolis USA and they specialise in songs about social issues that impact so many of us.
The band is mainly comprised of two foundation players, Jenny Case and Rex Haberman, but they have a floating crew of four to six additional players who slot in depending on the gig and availability.
They released their debut album, Dulce et Decorum Est, on October 13, 2012.
The title was taken from a famous first world war poem by Wilfred Owen that described in harrowing detail the death of a soldier who was killed by chlorine gas.
Owen himself was killed by machinegun fire a few days before the armistice was signed ending World War 1 and his poems stand in stark contrast to the poem For The Fallen by Laurence Binyon from which we get the Anzac day ode.
Better Place is War Poets latest single and it comes from a 5 track EP titled American Police State.
Better Place sees the protagonist sitting in the gutter as the sun’s going down with nothing to do and no money in his pockets.
When he closes his eyes, he can see a better place but he has no idea how to get there.
It’s a good up-tempo rock track and it’s certainly whetted my appetite for the EP.
The EP’s track list is as follows: Better Place, American Police State: Closing In, American Police State: 8.05 Saturday Night, American police State: Where Has Love Gone, Red Lake.
A mini album written around an important theme; it’s got to be worthwhile checking out.
As I’ve written before there has always been popular music exponents who have been driven to respond to greed, corruption, the abuse of power, and the inequalities of life in song.
Some have made a career out of it, for others their anger has erupted artistically only a few times in their otherwise normal artistic careers.
But popular music by its very nature has the ability to bring issues to the attention of the populace, that’s why politicians, particularly on the conservative side of politics, are wary of protest songs.
Margaret Thatcher’s government in Great Britain even banned the Split-Enz song Six Months In A Leaky Boat during the Falkland’s War because it might affect morale, while the Nina Simone’s song Strange Fruit, which was about the vigilante lynching of blacks in the southern states of the USA, was banned in some of those southern states.
