Album Review: Bob Vylan - Humble As the Sun
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
In 1821, the English writer, Percy Bysshe Shelley, called poets "unacknowledged legislators of the world” and although the occupation of Poet as Shelley recognised might have faded into history, the mantal has been taken up by musicians and lyricists. I’m not suggesting all musicians or lyricists have something meaningful to say – I cannot for the life of me find any deeper subtext in Baby Shark – but when one does, their voice needs to be heard.
The meteoric rise of duo Bobby and Bobbie as Bob Vylan since their inception in 2017 has been staggering and is based on nothing other than their talent as musicians and songwriters and their uncanny ability to capture the zeitgeist in lyric and musical form.
The self-released Vylan and Dread records made some waves, but it was We Live Here from 2020 and its follow-up, 2022’s Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life, which was the first time a wholly self-released album broke into the Top Twenty.
High profile live shows and industry recognition had bolstered the duo’s profile, meaning expectation was high for this new album, with the tongue-in-check title of Humble as the Sun. Opening with the title track, a tune based around a lounge piano line, but loaded with barbed comments on the state of the nation, it’s the gateway to a deeply polemic contemplation of a country unnecessarily divided.
Ring the Alarm and Hunger Games are perhaps the most overtly Grime inspired tunes on offer, the first using eerie waves of guitars and drums to fashion a beat, while the second inserts a big guitar sound in its examination of the effects of the reality of life for many people. Closer, I’m Still Here acts as a companion piece to We Live Here’s title track, through a heavier and more intense musical progression and fast, snappy vocals.
Just as with both previous records, the Bobs have presented the appalling state of the world in the ten songs of Humble as the Sun. Whether that be the extent to which Britain is a broken society at the moment, the lad’s lived experience of growing up as young black men, the dangers of walking the streets and the seeming disassociation of the Politicians from the people they are elected to serve.
Reign is all about the electronic dance beats, and Right Here samples Fat Boy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now. Makes Me Violent leans into the 90s Alternative vibes, considering the use of sleight of hand distraction of celebrity culture to obfuscate what’s really going on.
Bob Vylan have been accepted across the cultural divide and their neo-punk has seen them going down a storm at successive Rebellion Festivals. On Humble as the Sun, the fat guitars and rapid pacing of GYAG (Get Yourself a Gun), the tinge of electronics in Dream Big and the musically aggressive He’s the Man slakes the appetite of us with a more traditional taste.
To say Humble as the Sun is a continuation of the trajectory followed by We Live Here and Price of Life might make it sound as though this new record finds Bob Vylan going over the same ground; in a way it is, but when that ground is so fertile and the creatives are so passionate about their work, then it can only lead to success.
I first saw the band a couple of years back in their own show at Manchester’s Club Academy and, being middle aged and white, entered with some trepidation. But the band speak of their experience, as it’s the only thing an artist can, but their experience is a universal one and resonates with everyone who feels they’re getting a raw deal out of this thing called life.
So, I bring it back to Shelley; if you want to know the state of the world, don’t look to the corporate media, look to the artists, writers and comedians who haven’t been silenced or cancelled. Just yet.
