Review: Bristol Folk Festival – ‘the future of folk’

What is folk music? Dr Anna Rutherford, Bristol’s busiest polymath and creative director of the Folk Festival, reckons it’s about a feeling: ‘it makes being alive feel better,’ she says.

This weekend Bristol Folk Festival makes that statement impossible to argue with. The sun shone (most of the time) and life felt demonstrably better.

As is becoming traditional, Heartwood Chorus started things off on Friday night, at Bristol Cathedral. They were, as ever, wonderful. A folk choir who takes in trad. songs and brilliant versions of the likes of Bjork and Ivor Cutler, their voices soar and fill every inch of this great place.

The Breath filled the Cathedral with beauty on the festival’s Friday night – photo: Paul Blakemore

Anglo-Irish duo The Breath follow with their gorgeous jazz-tinged folk tunes. Actual song titles were less important than the wave-tossed, storm-shattered scene that they set, as Rioghnach Connolly’s voice and the fluid acoustic guitar of Stuart McCallum evoke islands in the Irish sea, of bruised beauty.

Cliona’s Wave, from their latest album Land of My Other, is set up on the drone of a shruti box and rolls and tumbles like the ocean, the two musicians painting pictures of the deepest blue. Between songs Connolly is a barroom raconteur, throaty chuckle and all, but when she sings? Oh my. The acoustics of the church encourage indulgence and opulence and she delivers in spades. The vocal gymnastics of For You are simply breathtaking.

Saturday saw the Festival back in the welcoming embrace of St George’s, its spiritual home. Sunlight flooded through the windows and a roomful of people buzzed with anticipation.

Bristol based four-piece Around About Dusk fuse New Orleans jazz and Eastern European Folk. It’s the perfect way to start a sleepy Saturday afternoon. Clarinet and trumpet provide a gentle sway on Orchard Fruits and add a drunken waltz to The Moon. Two sides of the Atlantic slide beautifully around one another, like drinks on the bar of a Mississippi Steamer. Ender The Frog pokes the St George’s faithful to life with some delicious Balkan grooviness.

After that Rachel Baiman, all the way from Nashville, Tennessee, provided a different type of folk music altogether. One of those brilliant, rebellious, anti-authority Country musicians, Baiman is sparse and simple; just her voice, an array of acoustic instruments and a clutch of affecting songs.

Old Songs Never Die is all skeletal bluegrass and wind-blown Americana. It feels as though it’s been hung out to dry in a dust storm; it’s sunburnt and there’s grit in it. Self Made Man is an unfinished John Hartford song made whole, Bluegrass cracking and splintering ‘round the edges, a barbed-wire banjo just about keeping it together. A new song, Equine Elvis, about a war-hero horse, is storytelling at its finest with a Country twang.

Anglo-Irish Ranagri went down a story at St George’s – photo: Paul Blakemore

The Saturday afternoon headliners Ranagri, an Anglo-Irish four piece, go down an absolute storm. With a sense of the epic borrowed from The Waterboys, they are Celtic folk with a seam of mainstream rock running through them.

The Hare is an instrumental chase with harp, flute, acoustic guitar and bodhrán creating magic, and it is when the instruments come together that they are at their best. Eliza Marshall, on flute, and Eleanor Dunsdon, on harp, are extraordinary, both sprinkling beautiful folkiness across some of the more boisterous moments.

Donal Rogers is a fine singer who clearly takes words very seriously indeed. There are political points to be scored on  The Bogeyman, Tremors and The Medication Show but a sense of fun and a desire to keep toes tapping is never far away.

Destined for big things – Frankie Archer performing at the festival – photo: Paul Blakemore

If there’s just one thing to be taken away from Bristol’s Folk Festival this year, it is simply this – Frankie Archer is going to be a star. Not only lauded by ‘the Folkies’, she’s made an incredible appearance on Later…With Jools Holland, and has been supporting baroque indie-pop darlings The Last Dinner Party too. The world is hers for the taking.

Archer does unusual things to folk music. As she sings, she creates electronic soundscapes right there in front of you, with live sampling, crunchy beats, multi-tracked violins and voices. There’s a sense that she’s taking folk by the shoulders and giving it a damn good shake. She is thrilling.

Close the Coalhouse Door is sparse and acapella, blood-soaked and beautiful. As Archer builds up layers of her own voice it becomes shockingly intense, suffocatingly huge. Lucy Wan, too, is spine-tingling. Plucked violin and skittering beats become nightmarish. There is nothing comfortable here but you simply cannot wrench your eyes, or ears, away from the stage.

A crackle of vinyl starts Fair Mable of Wallington but subsides to allow Archer’s pure voice free-reign. She almost speaks the verses, the story unfolding simply around her, until a chaotic babble of her own voice, multi-tracked, ripped and torn, causes a vicious contrast. This sonic maelstrom is incredible and then, on her last song, the beats hit and smiles broaden. O The Bonny Fisherlad, taken from her debut EP Never So Red, is buoyed up on dance beats. The darkness disappears and a sprightly big-fish-little-fish-cardboard-box euphoria takes over. It’s dizzy with love.

Spiers and Boden are, probably, the perfect duo to headline Saturday night. Beloved for their time in Bellowhead, they are well versed in delivering a set of crowd pleasers. Boden is the showman, Spiers the melodeon-wielding wizard; between them they make Saturday night absolutely joyous.

Boden tackles the sprawling narratives of ancient ballads with ease. Always a wonderfully expressive storyteller, he makes The Birth of Robin Hood leap into life, his guitar and the melodeon sketching the scene. The Outlandish Knight is attacked with relish. They show why theirs is a blueprint that so many have followed.

Two instrumental sets are easily the highlight. Bailey Hill/Wittenham Clumps was written in praise of their favourite hills (!) and is fiendishly difficult and ridiculously fast. As the audience clap along so the melodeon playing gets faster – “I don’t remember asking you to speed up” mutters Spiers – until fingers are a blur.

Bellowhead’s Sloe Gin Set is one of the great sets of folk tunes and, together, Spiers and Boden show that they don’t need another nine musicians to make it brilliant. They finish, of course, with New York Girls and bring the house down.

Spiers and Boden brought the house down at Bristol Folk Festival – photo: Paul Blakemore

Sunday afternoon is full of revelations. This, after all, is why we love festivals – we get to see something new, someone to excite us. Chris Fox is exactly that. A brilliant singer-songwriter with a warm and easy charm and a whole stack of great songs.

The Bird of Paradise is slightly 60s flecked folk-pop while We Sing Hooray is a pirate recruitment shanty packed with clever bits and bobs emanating from a loop-box. There is something of Cosmo Sheldrake‘s hazy Englishness about his voice: the same amiability, the same affability. Way Up is blessed with a killer chorus, perfect for a bit of chair dancing and finger pointing and a brilliant way to start Sunday.

The Heather Ferrier Trio are the second revelation. Propelled by Adam Stapleford’s rattling, splashy drums and Ferrier’s virtuoso accordion they are jazz-y, folk-y and seriously groovy. 5 Minute Walk is just an absolute tune, guitar, drums and accordion leading us on a right old merry dance. Ferrier’s accordion playing is remarkably dextrous, lending an irresistible sway to Circles and a manic edge to Northern Frisk. On Last Night at Bobiks the changes in tempo cement the jazz vibes, hi-hats happily clattering away.

Anyone who has been around Bristol’s folk and roots scene for the last few years will be more than familiar with Lady Nade. Winner of several UK Americana awards, she is a West Country Nina Simone, an open-hearted songwriter of incredible power. She asserts, on opener Identity, that “I am me” and that sense of individualism is all pervading.

At turns Blues-y and steeped in Gospel Soul, Nade has a fantastic voice. Rainbows, taken from a forthcoming album, is wracked with heartbreak, torn from her very soul. She’s so vulnerable that it’s almost hard to watch. One of Us has a fantastic chorus and Willing is still, simply, a great song, a fine slice of West Country Soul. Her cover of Gillian Welch’s Everything is Free is sublime.

As the last notes of 14-piece folk orchestra, Filkin’s Ensemble, echo across Sunday evening, a wide-eyed stare emerges from St George’s that, with a grin, says, “I think I’ve just seen the future of folk music.” It’s not hard to see why every single conversation at the bar started with “well, they were amazing weren’t they?”

Filkin’s Ensemble – the future of folk – credit Barry Savell

Brought together over lockdown by Seth Bye and Chris Roberts (aka Filkin’s Drift), the Ensemble includes a string quartet, clarinet, saxophones, whistles, guitars and the glorious voice of Ellie Gowers. Comparisons to Bellowhead are probably inevitable but Filkin’s Ensemble are a deal more subtle and incredibly addictive.

Almost every folk act has a version of John Barleycorn but not every version sounds like this. Ellie Gowers’ voice is high and lovely, the string section are in constant movement, the brass adding depth and a contagious groove, a whistle picking out the melody. The sound is huge, all encompassing. It utterly fills St George’s and time just slips away.

Even though they play nine songs their set seems to be much too short. The whole audience seems desperate to drink every single drop of the Ensemble and forty-five minutes just won’t cut it. Arthur McBride is luxurious, the strings sweeping in just as they would in a classical orchestra; the brass is lush, celebratory and Gowers, once again, magnificent – it is so good to see her finding a place to showcase that incredible voice.

Richer is one of her own songs which starts with a cascade of violins and ends in huge psych-folk revels. The Wind and The Rain is a chance to really let go and, by the end, the entire Ensemble are bouncing in unison, the audience are on their feet and those “future of folk” epithets are being composed. A truly remarkable band.

All of which just left Bristol favourites Sheelanagig to bring the party home. They’ve been doing this for nearly twenty years and their wild enthusiasm is ridiculously infectious. Within moments of All Over the Floor starting people are on their feet, hopping from foot to foot trying, in vain, to keep up with the mad-dash, break-neck Balkan silliness launching itself from the stage.

Aaron Catlow is a dervish, whirling his fiddle around, hurtling around the stage, doing some sort of crazy one-legged dance and playing the violin as though taught by the devil himself. Whether playing a deranged waltz or the exhausted groove of Shetlag he is ridiculously high energy. He’s matched only by Luke Phillips on flute: when the two of them let rip there’s not a leg that goes un-shook.

Guitarist Alex Garden adds some super-villain soundtrack vibes to Bad Ken before getting fuzzy and funky on The Manc Monk. All the while fiddle and flute rage and the whole place dances and bounces and smiles.

If Dr Rutherford is right, and folk is about making the whole world feel better, then Filkin’s Ensemble, Sheelanagig, Frankie Archer and the whole of this brilliant festival make Bristol feel like the best place on earth.

Main photo: Sheelanagig by Paul Blakemore

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