On the cover of Mermaid Avenue there’s a great picture of Woody Guthrie playing a guitar painted with the words “this machine kills fascists”. It’s a good introduction to the idea of music as a subversive activity, which was taken up so enthusiastically by the next generation of American folk musicians, led by Pete Seeger and later Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter Paul and Mary. These men and women were subversive in a very overt political way. However, I was led to think about some more subtle forms of subversion recently while listening to one of my son’s favourites, Blackfield . A collaboration between the Israeli Aviv Geffen, and Englishman Steven Wilson (prolific songwriter and muso in a number of different guises), Blackfield are not political at all. They sing melodic rock songs of lost love and general depression. I was struck by one song in particular, called “End of the World”, which illustrates exactly what I mean. It has a killer piano hook which sucks you into a famili
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson