Leaping drunk in Hamburg, locked in a bunker in Berlin, tearing up the road from New York to Tokyo via everywhere in between, the non stop world of folk punk heroes Skinny Lister is broadening by the record. If their folk debut celebrated the sticks and their punkier second blinked in the bright lights of London, rocked-up third album, The Devil, The Heart & The Fight, has seen them go global.
A mature, vibrant and varied record, it mingles classic Skinny folk romances (‘Grace’, ‘Reunion’) with epic rock takes on rafter-rattling shanties (‘Beat It From The Chest’) and hearty Dexys-style tributes to the fans they meet on the road (‘Fair Winds & Following Seas’), plus a hitherto unseen darker side. Take the deceptively upbeat ‘Injuries’, Dan’s ode on the bruising nature of life, or ‘Devil In Me’, in which Lorna comes on like a particularly melodic Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction: “the devil in me will come for you and you’ll pay the price for not being very nice… you took my life, I’m taking yours, that seems to me a fair trade”. Gulp.
And The Devil, The Heart & The Fight is like Skinny’s previous albums gone backpacking; expanding its horizons, full of adventure, discovering itself and doing things it regrets in the morning. Have heart, ye devils, join the fight.