Arrest! Charlie Tipper - Red

by Dixie Ernill

published: 26 / 11 / 2020

Label: Bresking Dwon Recordings
Format: CD

Bristol stalwarts, Arrest! Charlie Tipper, raise the bar on excellent new album, 'Red'

Review

Charlie Tipper (in all the various forms of the band’s name) have released consistently great EPs over the last eight years, as well as three fine albums, one of which being a beguiling soundtrack album that really is worth a listen even if soundtracks are not your thing, and a compilation album that could actually be a greatest hits album. With close to four decades of making music in various guises, Tim Rippington and his cohorts would easily be forgiven for just going through the motions, but this is clearly not the case as 'Red' is arguably the band’s finest moment to date and probably the high point of all the musicians involved careers. Drawing inspiration from the old punk scene that most of them lived through (maybe only cornet player, Harry Furniss, is too young to have witnessed it first hand), the album has the same devil may care attitude. The band have always been socially and politically aware, borne out in the lyrics on this record, in particular 'Freedom of Speech' which does exactly as it says on the tin, more subtly on 'The Triple C' and also on the wonderful 'Poets' which rages against the loss of public amenities in favour of fancy apartments. Away from the angst there is a softer side to the band and in the shape of 'Annik', an ode to Ian Curtis’s Belgium girlfriend, and 'Don’t Leave Me Alone' , they conjure up two stunning three minute pop songs that swirl around the brain on first listen and just don’t leave. Elsewhere, 'The 93%' is a charged up punk-pop number enhanced by Furniss’s cornet playing and with more than a passing musical nod to an old Chesterfields number, 'Last Train to Yeovil', while 'Bubble', apt in these current times, despite pre-dating things, has some great guitar work. 'Shelf' is the kind of garage-pop that makes you want to leap around the room and pretend you were seventeem again and 'Hurt', again lifted by mournful cornet, is a slower emotional number. This year has been challenging to say the very least and the fact that some great new music has been released is nothing short of a godsend. So far this is one of three great albums you really should own, alongside the Silent Boys' 'Tilt-A-Whir l' and Davey Woodward and The Winter Orphans' Love and Optimism'.