NEW SINGLE RELEASE FROM LOUIS RIVE ‘THE STATE OF THE NATION’

Brand new single from one of our favourite artists the Catalonian based Scots singer-songwriter Louis Rive. Together ‘The State Of The Nation’ with the B-side ‘In The Shadows Of Big Ben’, takes a critical look at the double standards of living in Great Britain in an age defined by Brexit.

Scottish singer-songwriter, based in Barcelona, Louis draws on all aspects of folk music from the traditional ballads of the barroom to the modern day tale-tellers and poets. Influenced by The Pogues, Hamish Imlach, Matt McGinn and The Corries, to name but a few, Louis has set out to continue the grand tradition of the storytelling musician. His debut album, The Cheap Part Of Town, featured here last year and even went as far as #2 in our Top Ten Folk And Trad releases of 2018. The album was a truly wonderful and original half hour plus in the company of a singer-songwriter that deserves to more widely heard. Telling tales of working class life in folk music is not unusual but what is unusual is for them to be told with such passion and feeling and the taste and smell of authenticity that fills your senses with the legends of Louis life across Europe.

“Folk music is storytelling. Storytelling is poetry. Poetry is songwriting when you can’t play the guitar. Collecting stories of people and places and putting them into song is what I do. I’ve met every type of person there is to meet, especially through my work over the last decade. These are their stories, the stories of the street.”

The new single is available across all digital platforms and ‘The State Of The Nation’ aims to capture one of modern life’s most mysterious of traits, that of being Scottish in the modern day, and what relevance, if any, that moniker has any more. It’s nostalgic in a pointless way, and fairly lacking in optimism, so at least analogous with the general experience of being from north of the border.

The ‘State of the Nation’ is about the UK. It’s about being Scottish and it’s about living in Europe during a time of uncertainty. It may not be feel-good, but it might make you think, something that’s been fairly absent in the UK of late, in the wake of the great Brexit divide. In the wake of his critically acclaimed debut album and fresh from a summer of festival appearances across the UK, including Black Deer Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe, Louis’ new single provides a soundtrack to a land at odds with itself.

THE STATE OF THE NATION

Two-hundred years being wrapped snug in tartan

 Made to sing ‘God Save the Queen’

Your forefathers say ‘Be a proud son of Scotland’

But in this day and age what do they mean?

We’re all rebels and princes, fighters and lovers

 Feeling on top of the world

Oh the few who will feature on the pages of schoolbooks

And the many who’ll never be heard

 We’re solving the mystery without any proof

Oh enough of your lies, won’t you tell me the truth?

Are we up to our necks in the blood of old Jock Thompson’s bairns?

All the sugar, tobacco, cotton, molasses

Looking at history through rose tinted glasses

Nemo me impune lacessit, and other such joys

Be you Scottish or British or English or Irish

Tick the box for your colour or creed

Cultural appropriation on a packet of biscuits is the only real reference I need

From Ossian’s diaries to the Highland Societies

Inclusion behind padlocked doors

But the word ‘Caledonian’ was coined by the Romans

Just to mark out the mad bastards up north

Is it ‘yes’ is it ‘no’, is it getting beaten 3-0 at home?

Is it a pregnant teenager at the end of a phone?

But she hasn’t the time to read ‘Rob Roy’ nor ‘Ivanhoe’

Nothing to do so go out for a pint eh?

The blue-blooded bowler hats shout 1690 Next generation take heed and sharpen their swords

All suited and booted all dressed to the nines

In a Royal Stewart kilt from some factory line

‘Made in China’ hiding away under a plastic cockade Is it brains over brawn?

Is it link over lorne? Is it choosing the right football team?

The echoed frustrations in a half-empty Hampden With Gemmill, Dalgleish and Gordon McQueen

How do you feel about god or the devil? The ‘Flowers of the Forest’ for sale?

The young ones will pays for their parents’ transgressions

While the old ones rehash the old tales

Night by 15:30, cold mince and tatties

A wink to the lads and a toast to the lassies

A night at ‘Her Majesty’s Pleasure’ to round it all off

The blue and the white on a sky of slate grey

The grovelling politicos with nothing to say

But it’s hard getting by given neither the time nor the day

Hey for ‘Bobbin’ John’, hey for cockolorum

Tha tighin fodham, fodham, fodham

Oh well you take the high road and I’ll take the low

The ‘Skyscraper Wean’s’ got nowhere to go

Now the blue paint’s all smudged on the face

Of the star of the show

(you can stream/download State Of The Nation below for just £2)

Download State Of The Nation  Bandcamp

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