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Frank Turner - England Keep My Bones

It would be easy to take Frank's fourth album for granted, but it'd also be criminally negligent...

Rating: 9

Such has been the impressive, incremental quality of his recorded output, it’d be easy to take ‘England Keep My Bones’, Frank Turner’s fourth album, for granted. It would also be criminally negligent. It’s not enough to say that this will be one of the year’s standout records, nor that it is Turner’s best album yet. ‘England Keep My Bones’ will undoubtedly outlive such fleeting context, and affirms Frank’s status as one of the UK’s greatest songwriting talents. As ever, he’s comfortable mixing together styles and instrumentation to great effect. Opener ‘Eulogy’ starts out sounding like a Hovis advert before breaking into eardrum-rattling electric guitars and drums as Frank delivers its stirring lyrical message. A more traditional English folk approach appears in ‘Rivers’, while the medieval a cappella of ‘English Curse’, detailing the death of William II, provides an unconventional yet perfect midpoint. None of this is pretentiously done; as ever with Turner, great tunes come first, as exampled in the gloriously massive mosh-along rock song ‘One Foot Before The Other’, singles ‘Peggy Sang The Blues’ and ‘I Still Believe’, and the unshakably memorable ‘I Am Disappeared’. Closing with the smart anti-hymn ‘Glory Hallelujah’, ‘England Keep My Bones’ never falters. The soundtrack to this summer? Screw that – these songs will be soundtracking many of our lives for years to come.

Tim Newbound