CHUMBAWAMBA, those Leeds rock politicos, are to showcase their new album, English Rebel Songs 1381-1984, at the Black Swan Folk Club in York on June 17.

Tickets for the 8pm show have "virtually sold out" already: only eight were left at Cassadys at the time of going to press, priced at £5, concessions £4.

Chumbawamba may be best known for their 1997 number two hit Tubthumping but they are veterans in the field of agit-rock, originally recording English Rebel Songs in 1988. At the time they were determined to stir up a rout in the tiny anarcho-punk community by swapping guitars and drums for a cappella singing, inspired by groups such as the Watersons, Swan Arcade and the Wilson Family.

Fifteen years on, they felt they had learned enough about their voices to try again, updating and rearranging the songs "against a backdrop of American and British warmongering".

Discovered in songbooks and folk clubs and on cassette tapes, these songs have been chopped and changed and bludgeoned into shape with utmost respect for the original tunes. Ballads not included on the 1988 album have been added in the form of the melancholic curse The Bad Squire and Coal Not Dole, a lament against the destruction of communities brought about by the Tories' dismantling of the coal industry in the 1980s.

Featuring the likes of The Diggers Song, The Triumph Of General Ludd, Smashing Of The Van and Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire, English Rebel Songs is Chumbawamba's homage to the men and women who never had obituaries in the broadsheets; those who never received titles or appeared as an entry in Who's Who.

The support act at the Black Swan will be Brendan Croker.

Updated: 10:04 Friday, May 30, 2003