Chumbawamba

The first that most of the world heard of Chumbawamba was its 1997 worldwide hit, "Tubthumping," an inescapable party classic about drinking and singing. By that point, though, they'd already been a band for almost 15 years --an anarchist punk collective from Leeds, En gland, with a handful of traditional close-harmony folk tunes mixed into its repertoire and a sweet tooth for the pop charts. The band's first six albums are usefully condensed into the import collection Uneasy Listening. It's got Chumbawamba's angriest songs, and some of its funniest and most tuneful: broadside slams on homophobia, the British poll tax, nouveau riche architecture, and everything else that's not specifically anarchist. Best line: "Nothing ever burns down by itself/Every fire needs a little bit of help."

Once that I-get-knocked-down-but-I-get-up-again chorus connected, though, the group had all the help it needed. Considered as the populist agitprop it was meant to be, Tubthumper is an abject failure: It's perfectly possible to listen to it without getting a hint of its politics beyond polite up-with-people-ism, and releasing it on a major label made Chumbawamba come off as a multinational corporation's declawed pet anarchist. As a party record, though, it's swell, with thickly layered hooks and harmonies everywhere, and enormous choruses popping up every minute or so. WYSIWYG solves the problem by making its politics a lot more blatant, and the band seems a lot more enthusiastic laying into planned communities, Microsoft, and, ultimately, itself ("Dumbing Down"). Its 22 songs and splinters flow like a single suite, produced with the allusive high-density gloss of a TV commercial and sung with tongue nailed into cheek --the deadpan irony of "Celebration, Florida" hits harder than a full-volume rant possibly could. The shenanigans pause only for a lovely nearÐ a cappella take on the Bee Gees' "New York Mining Disaster 1941." Readymades, on the other hand, is a vacant, hookless dud: folk-song samples and bland singing pasted onto prefab dance grooves. Skippable. (DOUGLAS WOLK)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide