CD: odd numbers are polemic, evens the songs.

Thee Faction believe art is hammer, not a mirror. A sedentary society always prefers therapeutic music. As Nicky Wire put it: “music is not a gap year”. The result is an immediate mix of good politics, Rhythm ‘n’ Blues and insistent choruses. Plus, you get Richard Archer from Hard-Fi and backing vocals from a disco-lite chanteuse who’s been number one in the charts but preferred to remain anonymous…!

To bring a bit of revolution to the evolution of rock music, you can either, push the sonic manifesto to the limit and cultivate a branch of the family tree from that experimental seed. Or, by marrying an original lyrical idea with a traditional riff, turn an established form into something new. The latter is the strategy of Thee Faction and it works, if only because it takes a certain determined, and clearly collective, genius, to extract Marxist theory from dusty tomes and weld it to soul/blue collar rock n’ roll, to give birth to Socialist Rhythm & Blues.

Guthrie and Seeger, Lennon and Baez, Dylan and Crass changed views through song. Thee Faction do just that through sheer force of joy de vivre. Thee Faction are a lesson – an independent spirit who own their means of production. They rock to share an interpretation of the world.

Thee Faction aren’t slouches or whiners. They have an analysis. It is, after all, “fun to agitate”.