The Young ’Uns: Strangers

Hereteu Records

A heartfelt secular hymnary for these trouble times and a rallying cry for humanity, this is the fourth album from the Teesside vocal trio of Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes. Occasionally justified worthiness outweighs musical impact, but mostly these are eminently singable chronicles of social history, injustice and bigotry. They’re all written by Cooney except the album’s opener, Maggie Holland’s perennially rousing A Place Called

England. The others, delivered in the trio’s joyous a cappella harmonies with occasional instrumentation, include Ghafoor’s Bus, saluting the Stockton grandfather, Ghafoor Hussain, who bought a bus and converted it into a travelling soup kitchen for refugees, and Be the Man, a moving yet defiant anthem in the face of homophobia. Celebrations of human triumph include Dark Water, a powerful account of two Syrian refugees who survived by swimming a five-mile strait of the Aegean. ■