War Stories

Lancashire-based Harp and a Monkey call themselves ‘electro-folk-storytellers’ and their songs resonate with a strong sense of history coupled with a sharp eye for tales from lives less ordinary. The music here from published historian Martin Purdy (vocals, glockenspiel, accordion, harmonica and keyboards), Simon Jones (harp, guitar, viola) and Andy Smith (banjo, melodica, guitar and programming) can be as quirky as that instrumental line-up suggests. And lyrically, while it may be inspired by a fascination with World War I, it all comes with an intelligent awareness that the whole story isn’t necessarily as simple as the themes of remembrance and ‘the glorious dead’ to which the popular imagination has become tied. Forgotten heroes do have their place, as in ‘Raise a Glass to Danny’, inspired by the bravery of a piper who inspired his stricken comrades by stepping out onto the battlefield and playing his pipes under heavy fire, surviving the conflict only to end ignominiously in an unmarked grave in the 1950s. Elsewhere, though, there's the sly black humour of ‘Soldier Soldier’, the splendid irony of ‘Charlie Chaplin’ and the alarming ‘A Young Trooper Cut Down’ – a cautionary reminder that continual losses in manpower resulted from sexually transmitted diseases, too.