Description
The Tenementals are a Glasgow-based folk-punk band comprised of academics, musicians and artists who have been recording a series of songs that explore the radical side of the city's past - Their debut album Glasgow: A History comprises nine songs which explore the radical side of Glasgow's past, including men who died fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War, militant Suffragettes of the early twentieth century, and the 1820 Radical War. The songs, also interrogate Glasgow's past and present entanglements with Empire and slavery and celebrates the city's culture of pleasure and excess. The album is released on Strength in Numbers Records and supported by Glasgow City Heritage Trust. Rich and varied in musical form, this is not a nostalgic trip down memory lane, but an attempt to seize moments of Glasgow's radical past and blast them into the future.
Frontman David Archibald said:
"We tell a radical history of a radical city in a radical way. The songs engage with the complex interplay of a city's history - at personal and political levels - and explore moments of radical possibility - for instance, when the shipyards were occupied and ran by the workers.
We are interested in radical futures as much as radical pasts. We hope the songs operate as thought bombs, provocations to think and act in a radical way.
The Tenementals is a wild research project. Some of the band members are academics and it's got one foot in the university. But for a project like The Tenementals to have a life, to breathe, it has to move to its own beat and be run on the logics of a rock band. That's the only way that The Tenementals can be alive."