354: The Imagined Village, by the Imagined Village

The Imagined Village (United Kingdom)
The Imagined Village (2007)
11 tracks, 61 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Allll the way back at the beginning of this blog, in the very first entry, looking at Bellowhead’s Burlesque, I said that I’d be writing about the Imagined Village here at some point. Well, with only 12 days and 12 albums left to go, I’m finally getting around to it. No time like the present, right?

Alongside Bellowhead, the Imagined Village were the group to turn me on to English folk music. I can’t remember which one I’d listened to first, but they both hit me at roughly the same time, and I think that’s important. If I’d have heard one group doing interesting, exciting and different things with English folk music, maybe I would have been tempted to write it off as a one-time thing, the work of a few particularly talented musicians. When there’s two doing it – and making very different music from one another on top of that – that means there’s a movement happening. ‘Hmm,’ thought I, ‘maybe there’s something to this…’ thus leading me down a years-deep rabbit hole of scratchy field recordings, folk clubs in the upstairs rooms of pubs, fragile tomes of folklore and many great albums and gigs from the English folk scene.

Really, if you ever wanted to draw me into English folk music, you could barely come up with a formula as compelling as the Imagined Village. The idea was to use the music of the past to conceive of how the folk tradition may more accurately reflect the England of the 21st century. All the repertoire here is made up of traditional English songs and tunes or else directly inspired by them, and the musicians involved include such folk royalty as Martin and Eliza Carthy, Chris Wood and the Coppers but also big names from other fields such as Paul Weller, Benjamin Zephaniah, Billy Bragg, Sheila Chandra, the Afro Celt Sound System and Transglobal Underground.

It’s one of those projects where you look at the line-up with all its suitably impressive names and go ‘…can it actually work, though?’ Well, that’s an emphatic YES from me. You don’t have to listen to many of the tracks from here to realise it. Take ‘Tam Lyn Retold’, in which Benjamin Zephaniah updates the age-old story of a whirlwind romance, unexpected pregnancy and an epic battle between elf and fairy into one of clubbing, asylum seeking and the cruelties of the UK’s immigration system. He recites this genius spin on the old folktale in a dubwise fashion, backed by the beats and bass of Transglobal Underground, the sitar of Sheema Mukherjee and the fiddle and vocals of Eliza Carthy. That’s probably my favourite of the bunch, but they’re all like that, fresh takes that put the old songs in a different light while an astounding cast create magic around it.

By the time you read this in a week or so (or maybe years in the future, I don’t know), this won’t be news any more, but as I’m writing this, it’s the day that we’re coming to terms with the Conservatives’ massive re-election that keeps Boris Johnson as prime minister for another five years. It hurts, a lot; not just for me but for the millions whose lives will be negatively affected over the coming years. But I’m glad I get to write about the Imagined Village today, because this project, this group and this album are the opposite of Boris Johnson. The Imagined Village takes something that has been a valuable part of English culture for centuries and brings it more in line with the make-up of English culture today without dumbing down either side or losing anything in the process. The Imagined Village doesn’t hark back to a time long gone, but instead embraces all that is wonderful about multiculturalism, modernism and progressivism. Introducing dance beats and rock singers and dub poets and Indian sitars and dhols into English folk music doesn’t make it any less English – that is the England that I see around me and that I love. And it makes me love all these beautiful old traditions of England even more. Fuck Boris Johnson – I don’t live in his country. And I will strive to make my corner of this green and pleasant land a welcome home for all. This Imagined Village doesn’t deserve to return to the imagination.

311: St Giles Bowl, by Tim Jones and the Dark Lanterns

Tim Jones and the Dark Lanterns (United Kingdom)
St Giles Bowl (2015)
12 tracks, 45 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

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.

299: Sir Fôn Bach, by Llio Rhydderch

Llio Rhydderch (United Kingdom)
Sir Fôn Bach (2019)
9 tracks, 37 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Working in-office at Songlines magazine (as I have done since the beginning of the year) has meant that I have been listening to lots of music that I otherwise wouldn’t have even thought to pick up. I’ve been loving all the neat personal discoveries that this position has allowed me to make. Llio Rhydderch is one of them. I’d never heard of Rhydderch before, and when her album came in, it had no accompanying information. I could tell from her name and those of the album and the tracks that this was going to be Welsh music, but I expected it to be Welsh-language folk song. It wasn’t, but from the very beginning of the first track, I was completely captivated.

Rhydderch is the world’s foremost performer of the triple harp, a chromatic harp with three parallel rows of strings that is particular to Wales. She learnt the instrument completely by ear in true folk fashion, through watching, listening and copying, and she passes on the tradition in the same way. She is heavily invested in the preservation of this important Welsh heritage. To hear that puts one in mind of museum-music, pieces played the same way as they have been for centuries with reverential accuracy, but this album isn’t that, either.

Sir Fôn Bach is a completely solo album, just Rhydderch and her harp, and it is heavenly. The tone is so gentle and warm. The pace is never hurried, but never lags behind either. Each note is carefully chosen and executed in exactly the right way, all with a natural fluidity and supreme ease. The pieces in this set are based on traditional Welsh tunes or else composed in that same way, but Rhydderch is as much of an innovator as a preservationist. The music here is often somewhere between the extremes of folk and classical music, shifting to various points in that spectrum throughout the album. Different directions are taken, too. ‘Dychwelyd’ is an especially cinematic, impressionist piece; ‘Beth Yw'r Haf i Mi (Y Llawenydd a Fu)’ takes the ear to the realm of a medieval court; and the scales and techniques employed on ‘Anhawdd Ymadael’ are doubtlessly inspired by the Japanese koto.

If it weren’t for this album landing on my desk, I would never have stuck it into my CD player. The first impression formed by eye led me to believe this wouldn’t be my thing at all, and I was so wrong. I’ve barely been able to stop listening to it since. Sir Fôn Bach is without question my favourite album of 2019 so far, and I am delighted that I now get to explore the rest of this brilliant artist’s beautiful music.

288: World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Vol. 3: England, by Various Artists

Various Artists (United Kingdom)
World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Vol. 3: England (1955)
30 tracks, 48 minutes
iTunes

A couple of days ago, I discussed field recordings in relation to the Ocora series in general, and the album Burundi: Musique Traditionnelles in particular. Field recordings, and the spheres of anthropology and ethnomusicology at which they’re normally aimed, are very rightly often accused of ‘othering,’ looking at other cultures in terms of their opposition to Western cultures. Sometimes this is in a paternalistic way, sometimes in a clinical way, and very early work is sometimes downright insulting, but the common theme is that the recordist or researcher is positioned as an aloof, educated and superior observer, more akin to a wildlife documentarian than a fellow music enthusiast meeting with equals*.

That’s why I was so fascinated when I first listened to this album, part of the superb World Library of Folk and Primitive Music series. This was the first time that I’d ever heard ‘my’ culture presented in the same way as music from everywhere else in the world has been recorded for study. These are field recordings from England, presented in a series alongside music from across Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas. The music here shows the sound of English folk – that is, English people – from the late 30s to the early 50s; the pieces were recorded up and down the country (and just over the border into Wales too) in pubs and village halls, at fetes and in the street and in the homes of regular, musical people. A wide range of styles and functions are covered, from chanties to ballads to dances and drinking songs. Equal importance is placed on the rhythm and rhyming games of schoolchildren and the mumming plays of Dorset pubs at Christmas as on recordings of famous singers such as Ewan MacColl, Bertie Lloyd and Isla Cameron. The accompanying notes give detailed context for each piece, noting its participants, dates and locations as well as the histories of the pieces or cultural artefacts from the perspectives of both the performers and of researchers. In short, it is an amazing collection of anthropological recordings presented in the exact same way as music from any other, ‘other’ culture**.

It really gives a glimpse into the lives of non-urban English people of the time. At this point, folk music wasn’t something that was the result of revivals, songs learnt from recordings and performed in concerts or in folk clubs one night a month above a pub. This was entertainment and heritage, passed through by oral tradition. It was performed at work, at home and out-and-about or even – shock horror – in the downstairs of pubs. It was just part of what you do, music as life. It’s not just the contexts that make this interesting either. The music itself is fascinating, and a fair chunk of it is even good to listen to! Isla Cameron’s version of ‘Died for Love’ bowled me for six the first time I heard it; such an agonising and emotional song with a performance to boot, and with such a seemingly simple melody. This is the English blues. That recording is still one of my all-time favourites.

In his notes accompanying the LP, Alan Lomax – who compiled the album with Peter Kennedy, edited the entire series and even recorded a lot of the music himself – writes, ‘The vigor and charm of these living English folksongs may surprise most listeners; perhaps most of all the British.’ After all, these were the traditions of the countryside, the village and the small towns – they had already all but vanished in the big cities. This album and those like it were some of the catalysts of the second big English folk revival that came to a head in the 1960s. Nevertheless, I feel the album can still have the same impact on listeners today. The world that is captured in these recordings doesn’t exist anymore – or if it does, in very quiet ways. Listening to this album brings it to life once more. It also allows English people like myself to appreciate our own culture as an outsider, in much the same way as we listen to music from other cultures. A valuable listening exercise from many perspectives.



* These fields of study have improved upon this stance in the last 30ish years, making leaps and bounds in considerations to academic ethics, positionality and decolonisation of theory and practice, although there is undoubtedly a long way still to go. However, the popular imagination of anthropologists, ethnomusicologists and field recordings is still much as I have described, despite their advances.

** Well, almost. Most of the performers here are credited by name except in the instances of large group or ensemble recordings; in other volumes of this series (especially those not recorded in Western Europe or North America), performers are more likely to be anonymised – ‘woman from the such-and-such village,’ or ‘man singing and playing lute,’ for example. It was still the 1950s after all.

263: Unhalfbricking, by Fairport Convention

Fairport Convention (United Kingdom)
Unhalfbricking (1969)
8 tracks, 38 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Fairport Convention are the monarchs of English folk rock. Having started out in 1967 and going strong today (after a five year blip in the middle), and having gone through an orchestra’s worth of band members in the process, they didn’t just change the face of the scene, they became it.

Nowadays, Fairport are basically known as a continuation of the English folk tradition, with their repertoire either composed of ‘Trad. Arr.’ songs or pieces written in those styles, but they actually came together inspired by the US folk revival, figured-headed by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel and the like. It was around the period of this album that their tone started to shift, so the flavours at play give Unhalfbricking an interesting range of styles.

There is definitely a UK lean to a lot of the music – with ‘Genesis Hall’ and the traditional ‘A Sailor’s Life’ very much rooted there – but the American influence is still very much there, not least in the form of three Dylan covers. What made them so exciting, though, was how they reinterpreted the music of these scenes. These are obviously folkies through-and-through, but the other styles they work within are what makes their sounds stand out even today: it’s the opener ‘Genesis Hall’ with its slight-but-just-enough psychedelic twinge, which is followed up by ‘Si Tu Dois Partir’, the group’s own translation of Dylan’s ‘If You Gotta Go, Go Now’ rendered in a unique sort of morris/zydeco hybrid; later on, it’s the Louisiana blues of ‘Cajun Woman’ followed by the soft-rock of ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’. What I especially like is that they can flip it around the other way, too: Dylan’s ‘Percy’s Song’ is a ballad that in Fairport’s hands sounds as English as a pork pie and ale – save for one or two geographical references in the lyrics.

Although still very early in their career, it is Unhalfbricking (together with its follow-up Liege and Lief) that has pretty much ‘the classic’ line-up, including Sandy Denny on vocals, Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol on guitars and Dave Swarbrick on fiddle and mandolin (although Swarbrick technically wasn’t a member of the band yet, he plays on four of the eight tracks as a guest). You can hear why it’s the classic as well – they all bring something else to the table a little different from the rest, whether it’s a musical approach or a particular way of playing or songwriting.

And the most impressive of all for me is that this was their second album of 1969…and they went on to release Liege and Lief in the same year too. Not only did they manage to release three albums in one year – which is insane on its own – but to do it with a catastrophe in the middle (in which the band were involved in a road accident that killed drummer Martin Lamble and another passenger) and still produce three albums of which two are still seen as genre-defining fifty years later is just unthinkable. With all the amazing things happening in folk music both sides of the Atlantic at that time, Unhalfbricking holds up as probably the most successful album to blend UK and US traditions so thoroughly.

216: Engurland (City Shanties), by Dizraeli

Dizraeli (United Kingdom)
Engurland (City Shanties) (2009)
12 tracks, 42 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Engurland (City Shanties) was the album that poet-rapper Dizraeli made shortly before he formed The Small Gods, whose album Moving in the Dark we’ve already discussed.

After a long time fronting the Brighton-based funky-dubby D’n’B hip-hop band Bad Science, this was the first time he struck out under his own (stage) name, and took a bit of a different direction with it. All the way through this album, although there are many different factors and influences, the most frequent and obvious is the blend of hip-hop with British folk. It’s not as simple as Dizraeli just rapping over some twee English tunes with a beat to them, though. Instead, it’s more that he’s taken the way stories are told in traditional folk songs and applied that same technique to his own lyricism, whether in his raps, poems or songs. The melding of folk music and hip-hop instrumentals (as well as jazz, bits of classical and the like) is definitely still present here, but it’s done – like all of Dizraeli’s work – with the utmost intelligence and ingenuity that there’s not a shred of contrivance in the whole thing.

Really, there’s so much to love on this album, whatever your preferred direction is. The title track ‘Engurland’ is the most recognisable track on the album and probably the one that got the most attention – it’s a clever use of Fat Les’s ‘Vindaloo’ that takes a rather bleak overview of the grottier side of modern Englishness with a wicked chorus – but there’s so much else here. From a hip-hop angle, there’s some of the most addictive rap flows I’ve ever heard in ‘To the Garden’ and ‘Good God’; there’s beautiful, sad songs in ‘Take Me Dancing’, ‘Reach Out’ and ‘It Won’t Be Long’; there’s the absurdist poem ‘Bomb Tesco’ and the heart-breaking spoken-word story of ‘Maria’; there’s even some delicious folk-baroque instrumentals in ‘Pen Tangle’ (geddit?) and ‘Reach In’.

Engurland (City Shanties) has an (obviously, unavoidably) more youthful sound than his later work – ever so slightly more naïve, perhaps a tiny bit performative in some of its edginess – but it’s not actually any the worse for that. This is an album of outstanding craft, full of incredible rhetorical acrobatics, laugh-out-loud moments and genuinely spine-tingling moments (I’ll never forget his performance of ‘Maria’ to a packed Jazz Café: unaccompanied spoken word and the crowd was silent, hanging off every syllable until the chorus, when every voice in unison and entirely unbidden, began to sing as one. Tear-inducing.)

I said a similar thing last time, but I honestly do believe that Dizraeli – as a wordsmith, as a thinker and as a musician – should be legitimately regarded as a genius. It was obvious ten years ago when this album came out and it’s only been shown to be the real deal with everything he has done since. If you don’t follow the work of Dizraeli, I urge you to delve deep – there’s an ocean in his work.

[If you want to know more about Dizraeli, I highly recommend the thorough and well-written article on UKHH by Emilia Cox, entitled ‘Dizraeli: The Story So Far’]

136: This Was, by Jethro Tull

Jethro Tull (United Kingdom)
This Was (1968)
13 tracks, 47 minutes (2001 CD version)
Spotify ∙ iTunes

To compare two bands that have probably never been compared ever before, Jethro Tull are a bit like Maroon 5, who we talked about the other day. They both came out of the gates with a really strong album, but over the next few years, changed their sound rather dramatically.

Jethro Tull are now known as folk rock icons, albeit with a much heavier emphasis on the rock than the folk, but their debut album, This Was, is in quite a different realm. There are lots of cues from psychedelic rock and what would go on to be prog rock, and there are definitely elements taken from UK folk too, but what really sets this album apart from their later work is the heavy influence from blues and jazz. It’s these that really permeate every single track, whether they’re full-on country blues such as ‘Some Day the Sun Won’t Shine for You’ or the driving rock of ‘Dharma for One’ whose psychedelic elements bear a lot of resemblance to jazz fusion.

The unique blend of styles on this first album comes out of the fact that they had two main creative forces in the group at that time: singer and flautist Ian Anderson and guitarist Mick Abrahams. Anderson was definitely a jazz head and you can tell that by his tone, often imitative of Rahsaan Roland Kirk; Abraham was the one that brought the heaviest of the blues to the table.

You know by now that jazz and blues are two of the styles that most reliably hit me in the right spot, which is probably why this album is the one that does it for me. It’s not just those elements, of course; I love how they’re entwined with the rest of the sound in a way that sounds completely effortless. The way that a cover of Kirk’s ‘Serenade to a Cuckoo’ – an absolutely wonderful, flute-based instrumental track that I think is even better than the original – can sit alongside the heavy prog of something like ‘Cat’s Squirrel’ is a testament to that. The whole thing has a proper 60s production to it that really roots it in its time (in the best possible way) and it has performances to match: acidic, wry wit and intense musicianship all wrapped up in an exceeding amount of cool.

Shortly after This Was, Abrahams left the group after a falling out with Anderson over the musical direction and went on to found the group Blodwyn Pig (a lovely bit of bizarre music trivia is that, after Abrahams left, his first – if short-lived – replacement in Jethro Tull was Tony Iommi, lead guitarist of the band that were soon to be Black Sabbath). Blues stopped being a main element of their sound, and jazz fell by the wayside eventually too, to be replaced by more obvious folk roots, which then were faded out themselves in favour of a more standard rock sound.

It’s proper stereotypical to say of any artist ‘oh, I preferred their earlier work,’ not to mention strange, when we also – rightly, I think – expect artists to evolve in their work over time. Yet it’s such a common sentiment, and here I am saying the same thing twice in only a few days. There must be some reason for that mind-set, that has probably been discussed by better minds than mine. Answers on a postcard…

115: Bagpuss: The Songs and Music, by Sandra Kerr & John Faulkner

Sandra Kerr & John Faulkner (United Kingdom)
Bagpuss: The Songs and Music (1999)
21 tracks, 44 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

There has actually just been a recent release called The Music from Bagpuss on Earth Recordings, which should not be confused with this album, Bagpuss: The Songs and Music, which is from 1999. The newer release has different recorded versions of the same tracks, as well as a bunch more. But the earlier one is the one that I know, so it’s that one I’m writing about here.

And it is the album that I know. I’m not old enough to have watched Bagpuss as a kid, and I’ve since only ever caught glimpses of it on clip shows and the like. I actually rather stumbled upon this album, after hearing a very small snippet of a piece from it on a telly programme by Charlie Brooker and wanting to hear more of it. I wasn’t expecting it to be such a full-on folk fest. This happened during my slow blossoming into a folk music fan (which I’ve discussed a little before) and this album certainly helped me along the way.

The music really does reflect the nature of animator Oliver Postgate’s work: it is utterly charming and delightfully whimsical. There are silly little songs like the ‘mouse rounds’ (rounds, sung by mice, of course), to songs that would sound traditional if their subject matter was ever-so-slightly less surreal, such as ‘Uncle Feedle’ and ‘The Bony King of Nowhere’. There’s also occasional little spoken word bits and pieces from the wonderfully rounded voice of Postgate himself. It’s all so comforting and relaxing, and although the music’s themes are obviously child-friendly, the music itself is not dumbed down for the younger audience at all. This respect for its audience also means that Bagpuss: The Songs and Music is a fulfilling listen for music fans of any age.

098: Martin Carthy, by Martin Carthy

Martin Carthy (United Kingdom)
Martin Carthy (1965)
14 tracks, 40 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

I was already familiar with Martin Cathy by the time I heard this album. I knew he was a legendary English folk singer and musician just through the music scenes in which I ran; I was involved in the London folk scene by then too, and there were so many times that singers credit Carthy as the first time they heard a certain song; I’d even seen him live with the Imagined Village quite a few times. But I don’t think I’d ever really taken time to sit down and listen to his solo work. So when I did finally get to this one, lent to me by my mate Stephen, I was expecting it to be good, but it utterly blew me away.

This was Martin Carthy’s debut album, and it is stunning. The songs he sings are so well-chosen, and his voice is so subtle, making every small ornament of the melody ooze with emotion. He grips you into the songs and their stories. The first time I listened to this album’s version of ‘The Trees They Do Grow High,’ the conclusion of the sorry tale gave me shivers. To make a listener so invested in a story that seems old as Albion and in just three-and-a-half minutes is both a testament to the English folk tradition and Carthy’s interpretations of it. The musicianship is also important to mention: Carthy’s guitar is a lovely mix of English-style playing with cues from blues and American folk music, and he’s joined by Dave Swarbrick’s impressive and usually jaunty fiddle and mandolin.

He was only 24 when he made this record, but he sounds much older. Not just in his voice (although it does seem aged like a gnarled oak), but in its accomplishment: he already sounds like an old master, in the pieces he chooses and the way he wraps his voice around them. A lot of these pieces were fairly obscure when this record was released – now they’re all well-loved standards. Its influence echoed far and wide. Not only was it one of the most important records of the English folk revival that still brings people to the scene even now, but it also influenced abroad: Simon and Garfunkel’s version of ‘Scarborough Fair’ was directly taken from Martin Carthy, and the record was a profound influence on Bob Dylan too.

Folk music is particularly enduring in part I think because it has already survived so long; many of these songs are centuries old, so they must have some sort of universality that keeps them relevant across many different generations and cultural shifts. While there are some songs on this set that are rightfully dropping out of current use (such as the very rapey but unfortunately catchy ‘Two Magicians’), this album retains a timelessness that no doubt contributes to its on-going popularity and influence, that I am sure will last a long time yet.

082: Blackhouse, by Peatbog Faeries

Peatbog Faeries (United Kingdom)
Blackhouse (2015)
10 tracks, 59 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

The old adage is ‘never judge a book by its cover,’ but book covers serve an important function of enticing you to pick it up and give it a go – they are made to be judged, it’s their whole point. I don’t have a problem with the cover of Blackhouse, it doesn’t particularly stir me either way. But I will admit that I was put off from giving the Peatbog Faeries a go for a long time, just from their band name alone. It’s such a stereotypical name of what I imagine would be a proper crusty, quite bad folk band. I guess it’s supposed to be self-aware in that way, but not Jim-aware, so I wrote them off.

I was wrong. There’s not an inch of crust on them. It is folk music at its very heart, so I got that right at least – most of the tracks are based on self-penned reels and jigs and all that sort of stuff, replete with highland bagpipes, whistles and fiddles. As soon as that first track, ‘Is This Your Son?’ hits the speakers, though, those doubts disappeared. It doesn’t start with wholesome fiddlry or earnest twangitude: it starts with a dirty sawtooth synth wave, some apocalyptic drums and a deadly bassline. This isn’t ale drinkers in kilts with a sideline in toffee and shortbread sales (although they might be some of those things) – this is The Prodigy! Then the fiddles kick and it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Throughout Blackhouse, Peatbog Faeries prove themselves to be like a punkier, less Afro-ish Afro Celt Sound System, with its hard rock and deep electronica elements all undergirded by Celtic melodies and energies. A lot of this wouldn’t be out of place at a cyberpunk night, and it’s sure to get you bouncing. It isn’t as unrelenting as the opening track may have you expect; there’s some gentler pieces scattered here and there with a chill-out vibe. I think I personally would prefer it to keep banging 100% of the time, but the slower tracks aren’t bad and don’t necessarily disrupt the flow – I just like dancing hard when I can.

I’ve had opportunities to see Peatbog Faeries quite a few times over the years at festivals and such, but never took them due to the name thing, and I’ve not managed to see them since. I imagine that they’d be rocking. I’ll have to update you if I ever do catch them live. Until then, remember: judge books by their covers if you must, but don’t be afraid to take a peek inside a dubiously-jacketed one now and again.

001: Burlesque, by Bellowhead

Bellowhead (United Kingdom)
Burlesque (2006)
13 tracks, 60 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Although I pride myself on the breadth of my listening, for the longest time I dismissed the folk music of these islands – English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, the lot – as being hokey, boring and vaguely embarrassing. I’ve changed my tune now, obviously (and rather drastically), and I put that down in a large part to Bellowhead.

Their arrangements of English folk songs and tunes really revolutionised those traditions for me and, I think, many others. They kept the original melodies and tunes (mostly) but the old-school line-up of fiddles, melodions, acoustic guitars, bagpipes and the like were bolstered by a full horn section, strings and a kicking percussion section. They added elements from funk, jazz and disco, all while keeping things more or less acoustic and all with a fantastic humour.

The album I've chosen here is their debut album as it’s really their statement of intent – it encapsulates the sound that they continued to perfect – but really their skill was always their live shows. In their time, they must have been one of the best live bands around, their ability to get the crowd jumping from the first beat was uncanny. Unfortunately they hung up their horns in 2016, and to my knowledge there hasn’t been as rollicking a folk band since...and it may take a long time until they’re surpassed.

Together with the Imagined Village (who will feature at some point later in the year), Bellowhead really opened my ears to the possibilities of English folk music. It didn’t need to be all pass-me-the-tea-vicar, village-fête-and-bowling-green boredom after all. That also helped to configure my ears correctly to properly appreciate the more traditional side of things. If you don’t like folk music, here’s a folk band for you.