The Men They Couldn't Hang
How Green Is the Valley

Beyond their objective value, certain records stick with me for life, sequencing tracks of indescribable beauty: this is true for «Johnny Was» and «Alternative Ulster» on the debut by Stiff Little Fingers, or for «Safe European Home», «English Civil War» and «Tommy Gun», a formidable opening trio on the second Clash album, and each of you, dear DeBaserians, can surely say the same (indeed, I invite you to do so).

The same goes for «How Green Is The Valley» by The Men They Couldn't Hang, whose B-side is enhanced by two simply stunning tracks, the breakneck folk of «Going Back To Coventry» and the extraordinary «Shirt Of Blue».

But let's start from the beginning...

The Men They Couldn't Hang (by the way, what a great name for a band) formed in the early Eighties, initiated by Stefan Cush and Philip "Swill" Odgers (vocals and guitars), Paul Simmonds (guitar), Shanne Bradley (bass), and Jon Odgers (drums); people who, musically speaking, don't have any ambition to revolutionize the charts but are determined to state their few simple ideas clearly and decisively.

Stylistically oriented towards the folk tradition, with frequent forays into classic rock territories (at the time, people even spoke of Gaelic punk), the band initially appears as a bizarre cross between the Pogues and the Long Ryders, as demonstrated in their 1985 debut «Night Of A Thousand Candles», in exemplary tracks such as «The Green Fields Of France» (and if you close your eyes, Shane McGowan and his mates seem to materialize, grappling with «And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda») and «A Night To Remember», the whole thing interspersed with hints of garage and rockabilly. It results in an excellent album, brilliant and extremely varied, but anything but disjointed.

A year goes by and «How Green Is The Valley» comes out, certainly less lively than the debut but preferable for its compactness of sound and clarity of intent: in other words, the album of maturity and awareness.

Besides the already mentioned «Going Back To Coventry» and «Shirt Of Blue», the acoustic ballad «Parted From You», the brisk «Dancing On The Pier», and particularly the atypical «Ghosts Of Cable Street» where the appearance of horns adds a soul tint to the piece, deserve a mention.

But the strength of «Going Back To Coventry» and «Shirt Of Blue» overwhelms everything else.

There is a physical and irrational force that animates «Going Back To Coventry», folk-punk (or rather, punk-folk) at its peak; a force that drives you to jump and scream at the top of your lungs for the three minutes of the track, and that, as the good Finardi teaches, «... vibrates in your bones, enters your skin, tells you to go out, screams at you to change, to ditch the chatter and start fighting...».

A purely emotional force pervades «Shirt Of Blue», a splendid ballad that recalls the strike of the British miners of the National Union of Mineworkers led by Arthur Scargill between March 1984 and March 1985, through the imaginary story of two men who find themselves on opposite sides—one among the protesters, the other among the troops assigned to suppress them—after sharing a childhood and adolescence on the same side of life.

For me, the only possible comment is that Billy Bragg couldn't have done better...

In fact, if «Going Back To Coventry» and «Shirt Of Blue» had been released as A and B sides of the same single... well, that would have been one of the greatest singles of the '80s.