TRB 2024
Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh

WHEN he speaks, Tom Robinson brings the seasoned urbanity of the Radio 6 DJ to proceedings, full of self-deprecating charm and well crafted anecdote, but when he steps into the playlist of his first two albums, Power In The Darkness and TRB2, like a miracle, the snarling righteous punk of his 1970s self erupts undimmed and as devastatingly on message as ever.

If anything, the raspy half-sung half-howled timbre of his 74-year-old voice suits these distillations of anger even better than before and the effect is astonishing: you time-travel back to years in which Gay Liberation was radical and allied seamlessly to an anti-racist, anti-establishment movement, brimming with power.

It’s a salutary shot in the arm and a reminder that there was a time before identity politics crystallised and the only “identity” worth assuming was to be working class and confident in collective ability to change a world you hated. As a consequence, the call for solidarity implicit in Up Against The Wall, Blue Murder, Let my People Be or Days of Rage; the sheer threat of Long Hot Summer; and the eerie premonition of class warfare in The Winter Of ‘79 are as much of a wake-up call now as then. These are tight and belligerent arrangements with anthemic, sing-along choruses and lyrics lifted — it seems — from newsprint.