Album Review: Beans On Toast - "Survival of the Friendliest"


It's December so that must mean a new Beans On Toast album is in the offing. No less than his fourteenth, it was mostly written during and in the aftermath of the second lockdown in the early months of the year with the aim of coming up with a set of songs that tried to see the good in these decidedly bad times.

There's always been a lovely laid-back quality to Beans on Toast's previous albums and unlike last year's double release of Knee Deep In Nostalgia and The Unforeseeable Future, Survival of the Friendliest sees him working with a full band. The result is a genuinely uplifting set of songs with the rolling beat of Not Everybody Thinks We're Doomed writing the manifesto large while Rocks and Blow Volcano Blow both look at the wonders of nature. However, the mournful Tree of the Year is an angry lament at the old oak tree cut down to make way for the HS2 vanity project and The Commons is a Levellers style call to the dispossessed to rise up and reclaim the land stolen by the ruling class. Countering these though is the quite lovely Let's Get Married Again which takes a subject that could easily have become cloying but lends a Frank Turner style down to earthness about it to make it something genuinely touching.

Fair play to Beans and his band, he's done it again with this one and brought a smile to this ultra-cynical fortysomething's face and I'm pretty sure it'll do the same for you, just listen to the "keep the flame burning" message of encouragement on closer Love Yourself for proof. It's easy to mock those who try and persuade us that this world isn't going to hell on a go-kart where the brake cables have been cut but there's something about the simply heart-on-sleeve honesty on Survival of the Friendliest that makes it a genuinely charming collection of songs to warm your heart on these cold winter days. Pure chicken soup for the soul and all the better for it.


NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

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