Pop Music Reviews : New Model Army: Reflective Rabble-Rousers

Britain’s New Model Army is probably still most famous in the United States for canceling an American tour a few years back when its visa application was returned stamped “No Artistic Merit.” Much as one might disdain a government’s passing such judgment, it was easy for a critic to concur, such was the puerile nature of the trio’s quasi-political, rabble-rousing rave-ups.

Did we really want to import a band with a singer-songwriter named Slade the Leveller anyway?

Slade still hasn’t changed his name, nor his rough, heavily accented, unmelismatic singing style, but this time around the band is showing welcome signs of--brace yourself for the M-word-- maturity.

At the Whisky on Wednesday, the Army did trot out a few older, punkier songs that had a handful of born-too-late slam dancers on the floor going nuts. But most of the set was devoted to the less pedantic and much-improved new album “Thunder and Consolation,” which offers a more reflective look at the world. A fourth player who occasionally filled in on synthesizer, guitar and violin considerably embellished the power trio’s sound, reinforcing the greater variety of the latest album.

New songs focus mainly on deeply felt personal frustration with the inability to chart one’s destiny, be it in the face of societal pressures or, more interestingly, family patterns.

It sometimes appeared that Slade’s real frustration is that he isn’t Joe Strummer. And the urgency of the material does almost demand that if you’re going to really like this band, you have to buy the cocky underlying assumption that it matters , in the way the Clash was once “the only band that matters.” That’s an impossible stretch, but when this Leveller fellow settles down and sings about his or his friends’ down-to-earth hang-ups, he matters all he needs to.