Tenementals’ radical debut album ‘conjures a constellation of possibilities’

Glasgow: A History (Vol. I of VI) by The Tenementals, LP/CD/digital album on Strength In Numbers Records. (Photo: Julia Bauer)

Album review by Malcolm McGonigle

• Pop music seems to be all about feelings these days. So many contemporary songwriters spend their time dredging the swill of emotion to find new ways of saying the same old things. But the recent release of a fiery new vinyl album from the Tenementals presents a brisk contrast to this approach.

Chief songwriters David Archibald and Simon Whittle have their radar set on the ruinous nature of class struggles and rampant capitalism.

It may not sound like much of a sell, but there’s surely a politics shaped hole in modern music just begging to be filled with some urgent, bristling anthems.

Colonialism, industry, poverty & class struggle
Glasgow: A History definitely fills the brief. Adorned with a suitably punky cut-up cover and a clutch of urgent bangers, it positively explodes with lyrical and punchy narratives.

Opening track The Owl of Minerva offers a birds-eye view of Glasgow’s past, taking in colonialism, industry, poverty and class struggle. Its tightly woven lyric reveals how inequality and serious wealth bunch-up close across the modern city’s geography.

Capitalist wreckage revealed
As the bird’s piercing eye flits East to West, North to South, from industrial wastelands to leafy gardens and financial districts, the wreckage of capitalism is revealed in a stirring polemic.

Archibald sounds suitably enraged as he delivers a ferocious reading of ruined and buried stories across a tight, punchy backbeat. Although the song rattles with fierce energy it still maintains a precise poetic structure. In fact, many of the songs on this album would work as spoken poetry.

Elsewhere, Pentimento reveals a lighter touch where the band demonstrate their virtuosity by weaving an ornate waltz around a delicate vocal by Jen Cunnion. It’s a crisp and sturdy comment on the fleeting nature of empires. Both this song and A Passion Flower’s Lament have the grittiness, lyricism and restless authority of PJ Harvey at her best.

Side two struggles to maintain the vibrant heft launched by the first, but this is no criticism since the message remains solid and forensic. Anger levels stay firmly in the peaks.

With so much subject matter, the Tenementals will never run out of material. It’s refreshing and exhilarating to see a modern band proudly chucking class politics into the insipid canon of today’s music scene. Their detailed explorations of power mechanisms offer a brisk alternative to our simpering Spotify lists.

All hail the Tenementals!
In our present hyper-capitalist meltdown, where billionaire tech bros proudly boast about swinging elections, and dark-money think-tanks control political parties, it’s surely time for artists, bands and creatives to take a leaf out of the Tenementals play-book and start pushing back.

All hail the Tenementals! They might be rag-pickers who rake through the dustbin of history, but they conjure a constellation of possibilities.

• Follow @tenementals online. Order limited vinyl albums, CDs, etc., at strengthinnumbersrecords.bandcamp.com/album/glasgow-a-history-volume-i-of-vi

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