In a thoroughly unegotistical way, a sense of triumph is manifest in Bellowhead’s essence. Partly this is due to the sheer size of the band. If what they do didn’t work, it wouldn’t be economically feasible. But this is joyful, accomplished, distinctive, accessible yet uncompromised music, and all eleven of them know it, as does the coloured smoke effect that dances with them around the stage.

Bellowhead have made English folk music stand, nay dance, thoroughly on its own two feet as great entertainment. Appreciating the band’s commitment to the folk tradition is only an optional side pleasure, as is admiring the sheer invention of the arrangements. Bellowhead work foremost as lively, dancey, rousing music that can take on all-comers from any musical background. Definitely an act to elicit an ‘I don’t like folk music normally, but…’ response. Certainly the turn-out was impressive for a Monday evening, and I can’t imagine anyone left dissatisfied.

As the album’s title, Burlesque, and its alluringly sinister cover indicate, there’s a hint of Weillesque decadent cabaret in the arrangements, but the sincere dedication and good humour of the players is thoroughly folk club, and the sense of fun is old-time university rag (there’s quite a large Oxbridge contingent in the line-up, after all). As always with good folk, there’s a sense of taking bitter life experience and transforming it into musical pleasure. The subject matter might be, for instance, the tragedy of the Napoleonic Wars, but the end-product transforms yet honours the original sentiment with an uplifting musical feast, uniting the contemporary with the past, rekindling affinity with our ancestry.

How would The Copper Family have liked hearing their One May Morning Early rearranged into the brassy, festival-in-microcosm it becomes in the hands of Bellowhead? I think very much indeed. Rave on, folk music, rave on.

Writer: Rychard Carrington

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