Review: Bellowhead – Broadside

***Newsflash*** Bellowhead’s Broadside is currently no 10 in the mid-week Official Charts, published 17th Oct 2012***

As something utterly unique, Bellowhead have probably already confounded logic itself. Their last release Hedonism, which came out almost exactly two years ago, finally captured on disc what their legions of fans have come to expect live, namely the best time you can possibly have in the name of folk music. In the process they took a selection of traditional songs into the charts and within a year to Silver Disc status and 60,000 plus UK sales. It confirmed their position as the biggest selling independent folk band of all time and for those not easily impressed by music industry rankings, the fact that it took Liege & Lief 37 years to be accredited Gold for 100,000 sales, adds a little useful context. Such comparisons are perhaps invidious, yet Fairport’s classic offered a bold new take on the folk tradition and Bellowhead have surely done exactly the same again.

So where next? Broadside (released Monday) proves there’s been no resting on laurels, even if the same team of Bellowheaders and producer John Leckie are reunited. This time rather than Abbey Road, the rural retreat of Rockfield studios, acknowledged as the first residential studio with its remote location in the Monmouth countryside, was chosen as the venue for the recording. Famously, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody was recorded there and Jon Boden slyly remarked in a studio bulletin for Properganda that the spirit of dear Freddie was possibly reverberating around the rafters. It was the first hint that the massed voices of Bellowhead were to be a signature of Broadside.

The result is at times, even by Bellowhead’s standards, astonishing. Opener Byker Hill sets out the stall, starting in almost stately style, combining cello, fiddles and a swell of reeds and brass, before a blast from Ed Neuhauser’s helicon announces Jon Boden. The effect is grungy and as the rest of the band build a response through the choruses, the song takes on a sort of duality, caught somewhere between defiance and desperation. There’s no doubting the pride of the ‘collier lads’, but it’s fashioned from hard work and hard drink. There’s a ragged edge, enhanced by a fuzz-toned guitar or bouzouki from Benji, that heightens the feeling that it could all get out of hand.

Imminent collapse runs through into The Old Dun Cow, as the titular pub catches fire and those ensconced within try to drink it dry, before the whole lot goes up. Again the massed voices make their presence felt, subtly at first, before soaring off to presage a freewheeling sax-led conclusion. That Jon stumbles to deliver the line “And we all got blue-blind-paralytic drunk,” simply adds to the chaotic scene and the brass section brings every ounce of Bellowhead’s drama and swing into play.

It’s almost a relief to set sail through the shanty of Roll The Woodpile Down and the transportation ballad 10,000 Miles Away, taken as a holiday opportunity as a lad plots to follow his beloved Meg, with a government chain around her leg, to Sydney Bay. Once again the band get to exercise their vocal pipes with gusto, as the instruments bob, swell and break around the tunes. The latter has the prospect of being a fairly frisky slice of radio friendliness, although it might be a leap of faith too far to imagine it becoming a fixture of the playlists.

Betsy Baker provides the comparative calm of a pretty tune in the midst of this particular hurricane, yet ‘comparative’ is probably the key word here, as usual complexity still leaves you suitably impressed. Still, compared with the sinister goings on of Black Beetle Pies, well…! As deranged as the title sounds, the tale is worse and the band delight in it, taking it to its surreal limits. But therein lies the delights of Bellowhead. They have great fun through both songs, mixing sheer brio with jaw-dropping musicality and turn-on-a-sixpence playing.

Thousands Or More starts with an echo of Jon Boden’s love of community singing that found its ultimate expression through A Folk Song A Day, but once again the arrangement gives the song wings and it truly heads for the heavens on sweeping strings and sumptuous brass. It leads into the tune set and only composition not taken from folk’s history, The Dockside Rant / Sailing With The Tide, written by Jon. The ‘rant’ is a kind of dance and you can see the scene now, the band on stage delighting in a timely unified skip.

The Wife Of Usher’s Well is another strikingly original treatment of a ghostly summoning from beyond the grave, that is somehow imbued with the sense of desperation and darkness that makes the tragedy at its heart necessary. It can’t end well of course and at cock-crow, the three sons of the grieving mother must return from whence they came. Appropriately, What’s The Life Of A Man then turns grief on its head with a ‘grab the moment and enjoy it while you can’ message. There is a season for everything and we are all tied to that.

After all of the above, we still manage to climax in fulsome style. Lillibulero is classic Bellowhead and guaranteed to drive audiences into a grinning, bouncing sing-a-long frenzy. Go My Way splices the main brace of the shanty to the ballad Saucy Sailor, as if the two elements had somehow been unnaturally split asunder and only needed the appropriate tarry crew to put them back together.

Phew! To answer the question I posed up top… So where next? It might be obvious to grab and paraphrase a famous split infinitive, but their mission is to boldly go where no folk band has gone before. Hang on with all your might, it’s a hell of a ride and such joyous fun too. As a real bonus there’s a nice big heavyweight vinyl too, not to mention a deluxe CD package. Handsome!


 



The Bellowhead tours runs from 6th – 24th November 2012 – not to be missed!
Read an interview with the band in the latest issue of Properganda.

BELLOWHEAD BROADSIDE TOUR

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