Public Broadcasting Service - Every Valley: a record with a serious wallop

Time for a very different sort of broadcast. Public Service Broadcasting have made hay to date from blending voicerovers from old wartime newsreels and public service info films with dramatic guitar-heavy electronica.

It's a decent gimmick, but a gimmick nonetheless. Every Valley, though, is a much more strident and heftier affair, a record documenting the rise and fall of the coal industry in South Wales and concentrating on the effects of cultural change on those communities who used to depend on those who went down the mines.

Aided and abetted by Manic Street Preacher James Dean Bradfield, Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell, Haiku Salut, 9bach's Lisa Jen Brown and the Beaufort Male Choir, Public Broadcasting Service create a record with a serious wallop. Be it the strident protest tones on Turn No More or the evocative They Gave Me A Lamp, this is a set of songs with much to chew on and much which resonates with the socio-economic tides of today.

[ publicservicebroadcasting.net ]