Levelling the Land by The Levellers

Levelling the Land, the Levellers' second full-length album, came out on China Records in 1991, and it's the record that carried a scruffy Brighton folk-punk crew onto the international stage. It was their first with Simon Friend on board, singing, writing and playing guitar and mandolin in place of Alan Miles, though Miles still shares the writing credit on "Liberty Song."

This is folk rock with mud on its boots and its fists up: Jon Sevink's fiddle saws across the top, Jeremy Cunningham and Charlie Heather drive it like a convoy on the move, and Mark Chadwick bellows over the lot. "One Way" became the band's unofficial anthem, "Battle of the Beanfield" revisits the 1985 police action against New Age travellers, and "Fifteen Years" did so well as a single in 1992 that later pressings slotted it in as track three. The album went Gold and reached number 14 in the UK.

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