'S'All Bellow

I just had to choose my favourite local records of 2010. I hate doing that every year. Firstly, because I hardly have the time and cash to listen to every local release so I'm sure there are some great records I could vote for (for example I suspect the new Bellowhead and the Colours CD are both brilloiant, but I haven't bought them), but I have to leave them out; and secondly because it's not the end of bloody 2010 yet.

And speaking of Bellowhead, here you go. Question: are they an Oxford band or not? The debate rages on...


BELLOWHEAD – Oxford Folk Festival, Regal, 18/11/10

It’s clear and light with a surprising fruity afterbite and – what’s that? We’re not supposed to review the beer? OK, but it’s damned unusual for a touring band to bring their bespoke ale along, especially in the gutted grandeur of The Regal, a gorgeous art deco hangar held together by a lick of emulsion and a few coats of Carling and party foam. Whilst we’re not naive enough to believe Bellowhead themselves nurtured the brew, any more than Christina Aguilera slaved long nights in a lab perfecting her perfume, in some ways a thousand pints of real ale on trestle stands is the perfect symbol of Bellowhead: it clearly communes with craft and tradition, but also says unequivocably, “we are here to party”.

And party we do. It’s unfair to judge any musicians by their fans – we’d have to throw out those Wagner CDs if so – but the Bellowhead massive are so infectious, swaying like a vast choppy sea to Jacque Brel’s “Amsterdam”, and leaping like randy crickets to “New York Girls” (not bad when the room’s average age is double that of many events), until it’s physically impossible to leave having had a bad time. But then again, the music would do that if the gig were in an empty undertakers.

Spiers and Boden’s folk cabaret juggernaut has been rumbling for six years now, but we’ve only just realised the genius twist that makes them unbeatable. Yes, the vocals are seedily dramatic, yes the rhythms are thumping and carnivalistic, but it’s the four brass players who add the secret spice, pitched somewhere between Oktoberfest oompah, jazz abandon and Stax horn stabs: they turn folk standard “A-Begging I Will Go” into a taut blaxploitation theme, a stakeout outside Cecil Sharp House. At moments like this, Bellowhead remind us oddly of Blood, Sweat & Tears (owners of the greatest funk tuba solo ever recorded), being as they are a huddle of kickass musicians who don’t let their chops obscure their sense of fun, but who don’t let the craic prohibit intricate arrangements and sensitive playing. It’s a week where Oxford’s self-styled Blessing Force movement dandles the London media like a Machiavellian puppeteer; best of luck to them, but how many of the thousands of people reading encomiums of bands barely out of the bedroom stage know that one of the best acts to come from Oxford this millennium is currently touring the nation? If they gave Bellowhead a chance, they’d never look back: trad, bad, and euphoric to know.