Make Your Mark

‘Did you hear the final warning?… Did you hear the people calling?’ The first lines of ‘Hollow’, the opening track of Make Your Mark, chime with the times as the leaders of the world (some of them) gather at COP26 in Glasgow to tease out ways to tackle the climate crisis. A sense of urgency pervades Seth Lakeman’s album. These 14 new songs, written while he was locked down at home on Dartmoor by COVID-19, are expressions of deep and wide ranging inquiry and concern: for the natural world, for vulnerable people and for social progress. ‘Change’ is about an agricultural worker made redundant by modernisation. ‘You might like to run away, but nature likes to walk,’ he says, and here Lakeman is addressing the wider dislocation of people from the land. ‘Side by Side’ specifically describes the Black Lives Matter marches, but speaks more widely about solidarity and activism. There are more personal concerns, too, for his own relationships and well-being. Someone close who has passed away is movingly commemorated in the song ‘Fallen Friend’.

Driving drums, assertive bass, searing solos, full-on vocals – Make Your Mark has all the tropes of rock music. But that’s a double bass, and fiddle rather than lead guitar. And Lakeman is a storyteller. ‘The Giant’ recounts the rescue of a stranded whale, ‘Shoals to Turn’, evokes night fishing with vivid images. Some denigrate Lakeman as a folkie, others for his pop sensibility. But why should he not straddle both worlds? Lakeman has plenty to say and he says it emphatically – lyrically and musically. With this, his 11th studio album, he certainly does make his mark.