St Giles Bowl (2015)
12 tracks, 45 minutes
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In my first spell living there, I became, through my flatmate, a regular attendee of the folk clubs of North London. They’re good fun: get together in a little room in a pub and sing songs with a cast of interesting – and, often, rather odd – characters. I even had a few folk songs that were my go-to, and it’s a sign of the scene’s loveliness that no-one outwardly minded about my lack of variety or singing the occasional blues when I’d run out of British material. I have really fond memories of that time, including sort of kinda half-running the folk club at the Oak & Pastor pub, which became our very own local night – really sweet. Among all of the singers and musicians that would come to the various pubs, there were a few that stuck out from the rest, and Tim Jones and the Dark Lanterns were some of them.
Ever since hearing them at The Constitution in Camden, it was obvious that they were special – I don’t think I’d ever gone home singing someone else’s song quite that quickly before. That was at their very beginnings as a band and they’ve been one of my favourite folk ensembles ever since. They came out with their debut album, St Giles Bowl, about two years later, and I snapped it up as soon as I could.
I’m always in awe of Tim’s ability to write folk songs that sound as if they have been in the tradition for at least a century, if not time immemorial. It’s bizarre to me that there is just one piece on this album that is not written by him, the short ‘intermission’ of the traditional Irish tune ‘The Wounded Hussar’, played by Robin Timmis on fiddle and Ted Kemp on concertina.
Two songs in particular stand out as self-penned ‘Trad. Arr.’-alikes. There’s ‘Harringay Races’, a story around hopeless gambler Harryboy Boas, protagonist of Alexander Baron’s 1963 novel The Lowlife. It’s fully a cappella, with Jones taking the verses on his own and joined by Kemp and Melissa Smith for the choruses, and the fondness in the voices belie the vaguely depressing nature of the song. It’s the sort of piece that sounds excellent when joined by a whole chorus of drunken revellers. And then there’s ‘Long Red Hair’, which I am convinced will go down in history as folktale: a man swaps bodies with a crafty cat for one night to get closer to the woman he pines after, only to find on meeting again that he – a ruthless hunter – has slaughtered 16 men in the night; confronted with the choice between facing the gallows as a human or remaining as a cat forever, he spends the rest of his days with his love and her husband while hearing tales of a bandit with his name. What an amazing story! And one that was surely written in the 1600s – but nope, that’s just Tim Jones and his incredible brain.
And the album is full of them. The tub-thumping opener ‘One of a Thousand Men’, the tipsy title-track, the poignant death-minded ‘Gallow’s Ground’. There’s also pieces with a slight country inflection, such as ‘Orpheus’ and ‘Iron & Smoke’. And there’s also also the closer ‘Far Normandy’, an absolutely beautiful and moving solo song of just Tim and his guitar that has the silliest backstory I’ve ever heard. I’ll let him tell it next time you see the group live. This isn’t the most polished album from a recording standpoint, but as a set of songs it is simply stunning.
This is a band that deserves the attention of any and all fans of UK folk. When it was announced – live on BBC Radio 3 – that their second album, 2017’s Blossom and Fruit, had won the coveted fRoots Editor’s Choice Album of the Year, I was so proud. This was my band; I’d never been a Dark Lantern myself but to watch them go from their formative times in the North London folk clubs to such a potent recognition of their skills was heart-swelling, and very much deserved. I’m honoured to count Tim Jones and the various Dark Lanterns as my friends, and I’m always excited to hear what they do next. And if you’ve never heard their music, you’re in for such a treat.
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