Gig review: New Model Army, Edinburgh Liquid Room

NOT so much post-punk as pre-Levellers, Bradford’s New Model Army always projected a brand of countercultural polemic wrapped up in the kind of chugging alternative rock which sat so well in the lower reaches of the charts in the 1980s.

This show, coming 31 years after their formation, didn’t so much speak to a new generation as preach to the converted, and there were diminishing returns evident on NMA’s somewhat stuck-in-the-past style.

Yet there was something endearing about a band whose lyrics attempt to make some sort of political point, even if it was only Purity’s assertion that “fear is the only enemy” or recent single Wired’s attempted transcendence of the capitalist system: “The movers move, the shakers shake… high on the high hills it all looks like nothing”.

With a flick of his long, silver-flecked hair, singer Justin Sullivan romantically dedicated the song to “the newly independent Scotland, as will be soon”.

The music wasn’t revelatory, through tracks like Christian Militia, The Ballad of Bodmin Pill and finally the apogee of their chunky punk-rock sound, No Rest. Yet it was a long, crowd-pleasing set marked out by amusingly self-deprecating asides, like the burst of Disco Inferno when Sullivan noted the reason for the early finish was “a f***ing disco – they’re kicking you out to get richer people in!” But even these pointed to a band whose honesty is sadly out of touch with the times.

Rating: ***