Say what you like about Frank Turner’s political leanings – and many people have since an appearance at the Olympics opening ceremony catapulted him to the big league and wider scrutiny in 2012 – it’s hard to deny the passion in his music. When his band Million Dead split in 2005, he retained their punk intensity but started writing songs that were more informed by English folk music. It’s this intensity, allied with an impressive work ethic, that has made him such an arena-filling live draw. But on record that passion turns out to be a double-edged sword: his emotive delivery gives spirit to his quieter material, but when he’s at his most strident, on his more anthemic numbers, it can start to feel as if he’s using his voice to beat the listener into submission, as with Get Better here.
Although he has described this sixth album as his “definitive statement”, it lacks the lyrical coherence that made 2011’s England Keep My Bones such a psycho-geographical tour de force, and is more in keeping with 2013’s patchy Tape Deck Heart. That was a more personal affair, Turner picking over the bones of doomed romances, and relationships figure heavily again this time. Mittens is likable enough until it’s crushed by the overwrought vocals, and relies on a knitwear allusion (“We used to fit like mittens but never like gloves”) to highlight one of Cupid’s less successful matches. Nonstandard metaphors abound elsewhere too: Josephine sounds like the Killers after a crash course in 19th-century European history, with Turner comparing himself to Napoleon (“I’m Napoleon on Elba and you’re 100 days in 1815”) and Beethoven. As you do.
When not discussing affairs of the heart, Turner’s caught up in a string of ill-defined struggles. It’s never made explicit what he’s railing against, although past interviews suggest it might be having to pay his taxes, the redistribution of income or those no-good socialists at the Arts Council. One of these cryptic struggles is the focus of Love Forty Down, perhaps the best song that’s sort-of-about tennis since Hugh Laurie sang I’m in Love With Steffi Graf. Turner is up against it and desperately fighting his corner, replete with references to “umpires” and “break point”. It’s a relief that he doesn’t feel the need to add “new balls, please”.
Respite comes at the end, with his two most interesting songs. Silent Key rides in on a slow and stately hard rock riff and is based (very) loosely on the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster, as told from the intertwined perspectives of dying teacher turned astronaut Christa McAuliffe and a four-year-old amateur radio enthusiast in Hampshire, who might or might not be Turner himself. It’s followed by the heartbreaking Song for Josh, written in memory of Josh Burdette, a friend who worked at Washington DC’s 9:30 club and took his own life in 2013. Recorded live and backed only by acoustic guitar, it’s touching, honest, devoid of bombast, and all the better for it.
