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Review: Filkin’s Drift, Downend Folk & Roots – ‘Understated, gentle, exquisite’
After a fantastic tenth birthday party in July, Downend Folk & Roots took a well-deserved summer off.
Last night they returned to remind us, once again, just how important it is to be a part of something bigger – part of a community.
Both Filkin’s Drift and jaw dropping support act Michelle Holloway form a small part of 14-piece folk soon-to-be-superstars Filkin’s Ensemble. While the Ensemble have a massive, utterly addictive air, the solo bits are more gentle, more subtle; but the individual strengths are more obvious.
is needed now More than ever
There’s a sound that the Downend audience make as they fall in love with an artist. It’s a breathy mutter, a satisfied sigh.
Just as Michelle Holloway finishes her version of Karine Polwart’s Come Away In, the sound of falling in love whispers around the pews. Holloway sings entirely unaccompanied and has a voice that reaches out and warms the heart. It’s incredible.
Each song she sings comes with enormous emotional heft and the lack of instrumentation forces us to pay attention to the words.
Nancy Kerr’s Dark Honey has an incredulous sense of disbelief that humans could be so destructive, so careless. Jon Wilks’ Mary Ashford’s Tragedy highlights the dangers that women face walking home at night.
Holloway’s warmth draws us in, then the words smash us between the eyes. It’s the classic folky one-two. An iron fist in a velvet glove and so easy to fall in love with.
Chris Roberts and Seth Bye are the driving force behind Filkin’s Ensemble, their ambitious lockdown project. They have created what is, quite simply, the most exciting folk band around.
Tonight, though, it’s just the two of them. A fiddle, a guitar and two voices. Remarkably they still manage to fill every corner with their songs and tunes that are rooted firmly in place.
Fiddler Seth Bye and guitarist Chris Roberts have recently completed a 870-mile foot-powered tour of Wales which they describe as ‘a radical approach to sustainable touring’
The two sets that they play straddle the borders of the South West. Roberts brings Welsh songs, redolent of home and family, while Bye’s fiddle conjures dance tunes from Gloucestershire. Both are wonderful.
On Hiraeth Roberts is gentle and delicate, his voice fragile, that heart-sick Welsh yearning beautifully evoked. His guitar playing is fluid, a tumbling mountain stream, notes nimbly glittering from impossibly long fingers until they join Bye’s fiddle in a celebration of home.
Adar Mân y Mynydd has the same sense of delicacy, plucked guitar and violin bird-like until the fiddle gently buoys the song, lifting it into the air. A breeze blows through Bugeilio’r Gwenith Gwyn as instruments and voices flutter, Roberts and Bye carefully sketching fields of wheat in muted colours, flecked with gold.
All the songs have a graceful quality, feather-light, enveloping listeners like mist. The tunes, however, work as the perfect counter-balance, tapping their toes and swirling around giddily.
The Girl I Left Behind Me is a Cotswold’s Morris tune that is brimming with dusky warmth, Bye’s fiddle scattering sunbeams, casting light. Touch Paper/The Gloucester Hornpipe is a little more sedate, the fiddle spiralling around Roberts’ heartbeat guitar, the pace of the dance languid, but happily so.
A couple of years ago, Filkin’s Drift decided to walk to work. They walked the Welsh coastal path for two months, playing gigs as they went. From this experience came a whole bunch of tunes, one of the best being St Tudno’s.
Starting with Roberts’ classical phrasing, before he hurtles into a helter-skelter insistence, Bye joins him and the two instruments face off, almost confrontational in their intensity. They spin around one another, touching and then dashing off before racing upwards, looking down on the church on the Great Orme peninsula.
As the September chill creeps through the church, Filkin’s Drift have one more comforting, warming treat. Richard Thompson’s Beeswing is one of the great modern folk songs and this version is gorgeous.
As with everything else that they play, it is understated, gentle, exquisite. Roberts and Bye harmonising as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
If there’s any justice in the world, Filkin’s Ensemble will be the ‘next big thing’ in folk. Until then, the individuals that emerge from the collective are very special too. They are a community creating remarkable things.
Images: Barry Savell
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