Folk is sexy again.
At least, that’s true according to one excited female Bellowhead enthusiast I met at the Carling Academy tonight. It’s safe to say that, although I can’t remember a time when folk was sexy, the majority of the crowd at tonight’s concert probably can. A significant minority may well remember a time when the ‘old’ songs performed tonight were just songs.
There are bald heads and beards aplenty; it’s a night when those of us who wear our hair on top of our heads are in the minority. Nonetheless, Bellowhead do have broad appeal, and their ‘sexy’ brand of traditional English folk music has seduced a diverse and passionate audience.
Bellowhead are very adept at capturing the imagination of the listener. Their lyrics are integral to this; rarely will you see a performance where the vocalist’s words rise so clearly from the stage.
Many of the songs are rich in macabre stories and grotesque imagery, and the band believe that this attracts an audience tired of the staid lyrical content of today’s mainstream pop-songs. “There’s enough songs about love and birds singing in trees that we need songs about zombie soldiers” asserts John Spiers, a founding member of the band.
Certainly songs like ‘Widow’s Curse’ the tale of a woman giving herself an abortion by drinking boiling hot wine, provide a refreshing change from many of today’s pop songs, and, according to Paul Sartin, fiddler and oboist with the band, tap into a very human fascination. “It’s the same thing that appeals to people who read the News of the World, a fascination with the dark-side.”
Whatever the nature of their appeal, Bellowhead’s rise has been rapid. They were awarded Best Live Act at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards after playing just four gigs together, and earlier this summer played to a crowd of 40,000 at the Proms in the Park, an event which clearly left an impression on the band, despite the indignity of playing below the ABBA tribute band Bjorn Again on the event’s bill.
Fiddler and bagpiper Sam Sweeney admits to feeling overwhelmed at the sea of faces that met him at the biggest gig of his life. Tonight’s crowd, though significantly less than 40,000 strong, makes its presence felt in an impressively raucous fashion.
The gig opens with ‘Jordan’, whose anthemic refrain rouses the already boisterous crowd into a confused mess of sweat, facial hair and naked scalp. It also sets the tone for a night of songs delivered as enthusiastically as they are received.
The band had proudly recalled a recent gig during which the floor of the venue had been broken by the collective stamping feet of their crowd, and it is clear immediately that the integrity of the floor must be a concern for venue-owners across the country when Bellowhead tour.
Every time a band-member introduces a song its name is greeted by a chorus of cheers, and the words of each song from new album Matachin are echoed back to the stage by the crowd.
Theatrical stage-craft is an important part of the Bellowhead experience, and band members dance about the stage, singing, stamping feet, and generally inciting a riotous response from their crowd. They are a band that aim to please, and that are clearly enjoying their popularity. Bellowhead are proud of the heritage of their music, and of its rejection of the obsession with modernity which characterises the contemporary music scene.
“The idea that everything has to be new and a rebellion against music that’s gone before it is really immediate, it’s nice not to be doing that. It’s the natural thing to make something that’s been popular for 700 years popular again.”
Bellowhead do much to update the songs they resurrect. Each song is given a sonic overhaul, as Spiers says: ‘We’ll take one sea-shanty and make it sound like a disco track, and one sea-shanty and make it swing’.
All the band’s songs explode into life during their live-set, as the impressive musicianship of each performer is showcased in a performance which demonstrates the skill with which the band harness the romantic imagery of the songs they adapt, forging their own unique pop-rock-disco-folk anthems.
In their own words, the band aim to ‘make folk music attractive’ and if the rapture of tonight’s crowd is anything to go by, they are succeeding. However, judging by this audience, Bellowhead have a long way to go yet to truly make folk sexy again.
