A Day On The Town

“The Burial reflected everything good about Skinhead, decent sound and respectable working class politics”, Hard As Nails fanzine.

If there was ever something as ‘pop skinhead’, that was the sound of The Burial one and only LP, ‘A Day On The Town’. And although ‘pop skinhead’ may sound as an oxymoron, these ten tracks that Skank Records edited in 1988 are the closest thing to that, with the permission of The Redskins.

Some songs denounce their earlier street-punk leanings, just listen to the bass on ‘Wrong Impression’ –a track that any classic Oi! Band could have recorded–, but others sound plainly 2-Tonish, as ‘Never Too Late’ or ‘40 Years’, with its Roddy ‘Radiation’ like guitar riffs and a rhythm that makes clear that these lads were fond of Northern Soul. ‘Sheila’ is like a King Sparrow calypso on speed –a skinhead love song! What will be the next, flowers on the DM’s?– and ‘Holding On’ is a superb piece, mixing a military-like punk drum with trumpets and a pop chorus. And what about ‘A Day On The Town’? It sounds as the song that a raucous version of The Kinks or a beer-filled Blur may have recorded, a bank holiday song, as the ‘Waterloo Sunset’ from a northern mining town in Thatcher’s England.

Closing this wonderful LP, two songs that anybody who has not seen a picture of The Burial could not imagine being belted out by a skinhead band: ‘Changes’, nude guitar to sing about the change from boyhood to manhood, and the folk-like farewell of ‘Just Above My Head’. And farewell it was, as The Burial recorded no more.

Keepin’ On Records has just reissued this LP, a 500-copies limited edition that keeps the original cover art but that also includes a 20-pages booklet with the band’s history and a wealth of old fanzine articles and paper cuttings.

A must!


Tracklist:
A1. Never Too Late
A2. The Gift
A3. Wrong Impression
A4. Sheila
A5. Holding On

B1. A Day On The Town
B2. Forty Years
B3. P.S. Slightly Confused
B4. Changes
B5. Just Above My Head