Close-up of the album cover. Photo: Courtesy of The Young'uns.
‘Strangers’ by The Young’uns
Review by Steve Whiting
I love our Quaker phrase ‘that of God’. It’s small and beautiful, and knows its limits. It gestures towards something beyond words. We use it as currency for the inexpressible yet collectively understood. We often think of it in terms of seeing it in another individual, but what does ‘that of God’ look like in the wider human world? I see it in the acts of love, compassion, sacrifice, courage, fortitude and strength that people do to make the world a better place. I hear about them in stories.
That’s why I love this album. Strangers is a collection of true stories: of extraordinary active compassion towards refugees; resilience and affirmation of love in the face of homophobia; heroic nonviolent action against terrorism; community solidarity against a fascist march; a Syrian refugee’s unbreakable will to survive; a 1930s version of the loaves and fishes parable; the yearnings of a world war one soldier for nature and peace; the inextinguishable love and compassion of a 1950s immigrant in the face of hatred and tragedy; and the story of the Jewish refugee who came from eastern Europe and went on to establish a well-known high street chain. These are life-force stories that stand up strong and proud for love, and push back against the hatred and division of our time.
The Young’uns are three men from South Shields who started singing sea-shanties in their local pub. They usually sing acappella, but use instrumental accompaniment when they feel the song needs it. Going to a live performance is a warm and happy experience, sprinkled with spontaneous, infectious humour. An abiding memory for me is sitting with my wife, completely on our own, outside a packed tent at the FolkEast festival. We were under the summer stars, listening and being moved by the live debut of these songs.
The opening song is neither an original nor new, though it has featured in their live performances for some years. Maggie Holland’s ‘A Place Called England’ describes the quiet signs that reveal the yearnings of ordinary people for something better. Something that has greater value and meaning than the retail parks, motorways, sink estates and factory farms. Something that connects us back to the living earth and gives joy, fulfilment, and can be shared. Like green shoots breaking through tarmac, it’s something in people that pushes through and reaches towards the Light. The song references real life examples, and so is the overture to the rest of the album. It’s the perfect introduction to the stories that follow of practical acts of love, and rebuttals of the oppression, dehumanisation and cruelty of our world gone wrong.
Strangers is a confident and powerful antidote to the culture of ‘othering’, and is a reminder that courageous love is active all day every day, in and between billions of people. But what is it that causes people to do these extraordinary things? To put themselves at risk for others? To give and keep giving, constantly acting on the belief that things can and should be better? To never give up and concede? What is it that causes love consistently to answer back? Perhaps we might call it ‘that of God’.