Music

If venues such as Notting Hill Arts Club can demand photo ID from us, scan it and then store a picture of us on their ‘secure’ computers, what’s next? An iris scan at the offie? Anti-boisterousness chip implants? It’s already near-impossible to protest outside Parliament, the one place where holding placards needs to be done, and now the ‘sus’ laws are making a comeback. Our civil liberties are being trampled on, so this album from Kent folk stalwart Wood is timely.

Exploring the process of ‘enclosure’ between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, which saw king and government give almost twenty-one per cent of open land to the gentry – presumably because peasants forgot to mow the lawn – you’d be forgiven for thinking that Wood’s chosen songs, dealing with displacement and our current, crowded predicament, would be all furious reels and kill-the-king rebel yells. Instead, these songs, some featuring Scot Karine Polwart, are downtrodden, powerful laments that warn us about ignoring and accepting too readily the decisions made by rich powerbrokers. And if politics are an inconvenience, then it’s at least an excellent history lesson.