Towards the Within — New Model Army, “Vagabonds”

We are old, we are young,
We are in this together
Vagabonds and children
Prisoners forever
With pulses a-raging and
Eyes full of wonder
Kicking out behind us again

Out planting trees a few weeks ago, I had a portable speaker on my beltloop and streaming music on it. I hadn’t listened to Justin and Co. for a spell and decided it was time to remedy that omission via giving the album “Thunder and Consolation” a spin (if that’s what you call it when you stream music and not put a record on a turntable).

Talk about earworming… Vagabonds is one of those songs that easily to sing the chorus with the band on, once you know the lyrics (see above) and NMA have been firmly stuck in my head since.

I came to NMA late in the game.

An old friend of mine, a Minnesota transplant from Gloucestershire, tried to introduce them to me around 1989 and I was having nothing of it at the time. I have no reasonable excuse other than I was probably a little soft in the brainpan at the time.

I do recall feeling a pull away from anything the might be considered goth aside from my sad Mission obsession at the time. And All About Eve, if they count (not convinced they were ever all that goth, in retrospect). I had largely moved on from gloom by that point. I was too enamored of other sounds (industrial, folk, hippie, “saccharine” pop, etc.) to lend much credence to a band I saw as just another alternative rock act.

About 10 years ago, looking for something new, I recalled Neil going on (and on) about the band and gave them another listen.

Ah, that young fool I was back then…

Anyway, life has changed me and while I don’t mind tossing on “Gods Own Medicine” every once in a great while, I do much more prefer to listen to Justin somehow fitting three lines of verse into a single line with an honest and earnest edge to the theme.

I imagine he doesn’t make many apologies for who he is or what he does and, from what I can tell, he needn’t.

Good. We need more folks like him.

Take a gander if want. It’s a bit longer version of the song because of the live intro, but the violin/fiddling is worth it.