Plenty of music seems angry nowadays, but not much of it is righteously angry. Stephan Smith, an activist troubadour of the old-school persuasion, aims to fill the righteous-rage gap with The Bell, an eight-song EP. Five of the tracks are different versions of the title tune, an honest-to-god anti-war protest with lyrics updated from the old folk song “False Knight On The Road” (which Smith also covers here).
“False Knight” stars an amorphous bad-guy figure trying to tempt a young boy away from the straight and narrow. “The Bell” turns that into a debate between a Master Of War and a child, who renounces the impending war and pronounces a withering curse on the wicked old warmonger.
Dean Ween, Mary Harris and the venerable Pete Seeger guest on Smith’s version of “The Bell”, which sounds tailor-made for protest-rally sing-alongs. Seeger contributes an a cappella rendition in which he sounds like the voice of doom, and Donna The Buffalo’s Tara Nevins adds a folksy version that conjures up images of Appalachian porches. But the best on of all is DJ Spooky’s “Paranoia Network Remix”, with a trip-hop pulse that perfectly compliments the rustic fiddle — a bridge between past and future.
