Levellers

Mark Chadwick on peace, principles, turning down headlining Reading, and being “the last punk band”.

The Levellers were made for these times. From despotic world leaders to environmental meltdown, Brighton’s folk-punk politicos have juicier targets right now than at any point since they debuted with 1990’s A Weapon Called The Word.

On eleventh album Peace, their signature sound – with Jon Sevink’s mournful fiddle atop charging punky guitars – remains rousing, and singer Mark Chadwick tells us their teeth are sharper than ever.

The last Levellers album was in 2012. How difficult has it been to watch developments over the past eight years? It’s insane. It’s fascinating. It’s depressing. There’s a lot of subjects coming out on this record. It’s about the disquiet, this uncomfortable feeling that’s creeping around us, whether it be down to populist governments, global warming or the coronavirus. It’s titled Peace because a lot of the record is about mental health. It’s about having some actual peace from the world. There’s a lot of anger and fear around at that moment.

You’ve said you feel like “the devil is walking the earth right now”. Yeah. I just had that feeling during the recording, and before. I’m not religious, but it feels like there’s a dark energy out there.

Despite that, do you still have hope? Some days more than others [laughs].

Can you tell us what the songs on the new record are about? The Men Who Would Be King is saying that the people who want power should be the last people to have it. Food Roof Family is saying that those three things are all we really need. I’ve never understood conspicuous wealth. Ghosts In The Water is asking what the great thinkers of the past would think of this modern era. As for Generation Fear, my daughter is nineteen and she’s saying: “What have you left us? Look around, it’s appalling.” And I really do feel sorry for them.

Jon’s fiddle is still a powerful sound. Oh God, yeah. It’s brilliant. The original idea of having a fiddle player was because we were bored of guitar solos at the end of the eighties. So when we first formed the band we said instead of getting the guitar to play the top line, let’s get a fiddle. And with that came the folky influence. We never set out to be a folk band. But the fiddle led us down that road.

How difficult was it to stay true to your ethics after you got success? There’s been points we were compromised. But there’s been points we’ve refused to compromise as well. People in the business didn’t understand what the fuck we were doing when we wouldn’t play Reading because we hated the festival so much. We’d all been to it, and way back then it was all about bottles of piss and queues for the toilets. There were no niceties, it was just a moneymaking machine, taking the piss out of teenagers. They offered us tremendous amounts of money to headline, and we just turned them down.

That’s a bold move. It comes back to being educated by Crass and The Clash, that core punk idealism. I’ve had people say: “You’re the last punk band. You’re the last vestige of that era”. We had principles, y’know?

“We never set out to be a folk band. The fiddle led us down that road.”

Peace is out now via On The Fiddle Records.