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The professional bit:

For anyone impatient to hear more from all-star folk band Bellowhead, the past few days have been a rare treat. Following Thursday’s Playhouse appearance by Benji Kirkpatrick and Paul Sartin as part of Faustus, last night saw the Maze play host to Bellowhead’s key founder members: singer and violinist Jon Boden, backed by John Spiers on melodeon and concertina.

Where Faustus focus on finely balanced three-way counterpoints (*), Spiers and Boden take a more straight-up traditional approach, with Spiers providing a solid, unflashy backdrop to his partner’s resonant vocals and amazing fiddle playing.

Clocking in at over two and a half hours, the duo’s marathon set showcased many numbers from their fifth album Vagabond. As befits its title, these were songs of rebels, wastrels, pirates, beggars… and even a certain Mr. Hood, whose conception and birth in the “good green-wood” provided the subject matter for a fine epic ballad.

Amongst the many splendid jigs, the irresistible Sloe Gin – as recently popularised by Bellowhead and The Imagined Village – made a welcome appearance.

The evening finished with a surprise non-traditional choice from the Tom Waits songbook: a lilting, yearning Innocent When You Dream, which had the crowd softly singing along, almost to themselves.

Photo of Spiers & Boden taken in Newcastle on May 22 2006 by pdcawley and reproduced under a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license.

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The amateur bit:

(*) The eagle-eyed reader will have noticed that this is the third consecutive gig review in which I have used the word "counterpoint". Are counterpoints the new curveballs? Perhaps they are.

(In truth, I filched the observation from K, who described Faustus as "more contrapuntal" and Spiers/Boden as "more chordal". I love it when he talks dirty.)

Boden, it has to be said, looked physically knackered - pasty-faced and red-eyed, in the manner of a new dad who hadn't slept for a few weeks - which made the two and a half hour set all the more remarkable. To further emphasise the already significant height difference between his lanky frame and Spiers' altogether squatter construction, Boden performed on top of a wooden box, which K reckoned was miked up, in order to add resonance to his all-important foot-stamping.

(Faustus were all about the feet, as well. I may be new to the folk scene, but I'm learning fast.)

Labels: eveningpost, gigs, popmusic

The professional bit:

Two years on from the breakup of Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, former leader Euros Childs continues to plough his gently idiosyncratic furrow. Seemingly impervious to the normal aging process, his demeanour remains cheerfully relaxed, and his solo material continues to blend whimsical pastoralism with understated tunefulness.

The Dodos have been steadily gathering critical acclaim since the release of their remarkable second album Visiter. Their music is both brutally primitive and impossibly complex, with drummer Logan Kroeber the undisputed star of the show.

In place of a standard kit, Kroeber pounded out his dizzyingly syncopated rhythms on a semi-circular set of four drums, balancing his breakneck tempo with an extraordinary lightness of touch, and displaying a technical accomplishment which frankly beggared belief. (*)

Over to the left, a seated, floppy-fringed Meric Long added plaintive indie-boy vocals, sometimes using two microphones to build looping effects. His equally unique guitar style combined bottleneck blues and oblique thrash, providing a mesmerising counterpoint to Kroeber’s ceaseless energy.

Meanwhile, Joe Heaner drifted on and off the stage, alternating between an industrial-sized glockenspiel, an ancient miniature organ, a giant cymbal and a vast, ugly-looking metal bucket.

Veering between rapturous applause and stunned silence, the uncommonly attentive audience lapped up every note. (**)

Photo of The Dodos taken in Groningen (Netherlands) on August 29 2008 by Niels ten Have and reproduced under a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license.

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The amateur bit:

(*) In actual fact, his drumming technique repeatedly brought Adam and the Ants to mind, circa Kings of the Wild Frontier, and particularly the intro to Antmusic. Lots of rimshots, and virtually no footwork, save for a tambourine attached to his left foot. Oh, and can we say CUTE? All lean and moustachioed, like a baby-faced Brandon Flowers.

(**) As my friends found out after the show (getting their posters signed while I chatted to Euros about his connection with Kevin Ayers), the band initially mistook our reverential silence for icy indifference. "We thought you weren't into it", they explained. "Then we realised: actually, you were just really into it."

Luckily for us, this lead to them adding an unscripted second encore (despite the drummer making reluctant "tired" signs at the singer, as well he might) - which turned out to be the most spectacular performance of the whole show. How the hell these things even get composed in the first place, I simply have no idea.

Labels: eveningpost, gigs, popmusic

The professional bit:

Boasting a collective pedigree that stretches from Norma Waterson to Seth Lakeman, and from Paul Weller to Bellowhead, Faustus could almost be described as a folk supergroup. Kicking off an exceptionally promising new folk season at the Playhouse, they worked hard to warm up the initially subdued audience, scattered over three rows in the stark studio space above Cast.

The three band members – Paul Sartin on violin and occasional oboe, Saul Rose on an array of melodeons, and Benji Kirkpatrick on guitar and bouzouki – radiated a relaxed, good-natured rapport, interspersing their music with droll asides and a dry banter which sometimes bordered on the surreal.

This easy demeanour masked a remarkable level of dexterity and craftsmanship. On dizzying jig medleys such as Next Stop Grimsby / The Three Rascals / Aunt Crisps, the players perched their intoxicatingly cheery melodic refrains on top of complex rhythms and constantly shifting counterpoints.

While the jigs were largely self-penned, the songs were all traditional: excavated from a variety of archives and songbooks, and given fresh, sturdy new arrangements. A broadly nautical theme ran through many of them. The Green Willow Tree told the story of a heroic but doomed cabin boy, betrayed by his captain and dispatched to a watery grave (*), while The Old Miser recounted the fate of an amorous sailor, sold for transportation by his sweetheart’s jealous father. On The New Deserter, a ballad made popular by Fairport Convention, the familiar lyric was given a haunting and effective new melody.

Photo of Faustus taken at the Union Chapel in London, May 14 2008 by BohemianCoast and reproduced under a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license.

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The amateur bit:

(*) This was of particular interest, since I ONCE WAS THAT CABIN BOY! 'Twas in the year 1974, and I had been assigned an understudy role to the lead chorister in our school's end-of-term production: The Golden Vanity, a childrens' opera by Benjamin Britten, which is based upon the same story as The Green Willow Tree. (With certain variations as to the exact manner of the plucky cabin boy's watery demise.)

Three or four days before show time, said chorister went down with a nasty case of the measles, and I was duly bumped up to Heroic Male Lead - a role I discharged with great gusto (drama being one of my Big Things at the age of 12, and did I ever tell you about the time I played Mole to Jeremy Clarkson's Toad?), albeit a semi-tone flat throughout (I winced my way through a subsequent classroom playback on the music master's reel-to-reel).

All matters of pitch control aside, my greatest challenge was miming a convincing dive from the deck of my ship (the titular Golden Vanity) into the tempestuous ocean below (as represented by the floor of the school gym), and then battling my way through the waves until I reached the dastardly pirate ship (on the other side of the gym, manned by a bunch of classmates in Marks and Sparks pyjamas with their mothers' scarves tied around their heads). As a confirmed non-swimmer, whose irreducible combination of stubborness and terror had broken the will of a long succcession of swimming teachers down at Doncaster Baths, I lacked all semblance of convincing mime technique. Many hours of coaching ensued, after which I was just about able to muster a vaguely convincing upper body breast stroke.

Following the high drama of my drowning ("And then, and only-then, did the crew-throw-out-a-ROPE!"), the opera climaxed with my re-appearance as a ghostly presence (i.e. standing behind a darkened screen with a gauze-covered, head-shaped hole cut in it, a hand-held torch pointing up at my ghostly chin), forever destined to haunt the ocean waves with my netherworldly wailing:

"I AM SIIIIIIIN-KING, SIIIIIIIN-KING, IN THE LOOOOOOW-LAND SEEEEEA...."

It was very moving. If half a tone flat.

I nearly told all this to Benji Kirkpatrick during the post-gig Meet And Greet/Retail Opportunity session - but thought better of it, confining myself to a simple "Ooh, I've got all these CDs already, thank you very much, that was great, bye bye!"

Well, one doesn't like to monopolise.

Labels: eveningpost, gigs, popmusic