Mike Wilson penned this review.
Burlesque takes traditional English music and dresses it up with vim and vigour, presenting 13 glorious tracks with full-on arrangements that instantly grab your attention. Bellowhead are an 11-piece band, led by renowned English folk musicians John Spiers and Jon Boden. The 11 members of Bellowhead play an impressive array of instruments, including the usual staples of a traditional folk band but also an impressively comprehensive brass section. The resulting music is most distinctly English but marries the traditional genre to lavish music hall and burlesque arrangements.
This is no careless collision of genres — Spiers and Boden have really done their homework here. The sleeve notes portray good evidence of this, providing comprehensive details of the history and source of each song. What they cleverly achieve in this truly exciting and invigorating collection is opening up the English tradition to a whole new audience.
The album hits all the right buttons from the offset with a stunning interpretation of “Rigs Of The Time,” a song that dates back to the Napoleonic Wars. The lyrics cast scorn on the tradesmen of the times for exploiting economic instability for their own gain. It’s a song that, despite its age, is equally relevant in modern times. Bellowhead’s theatrical style works well here, fittingly casting the tradesmen as the villains of the piece. “The Outlandish Knight” is a 17-verse traditional epic set to a Martin Carthy melody that swoops and soars, being equal parts graceful and menacing with a brooding brass arrangement. Lead vocals throughout the album are carried off with assurance and commitment by Jon Boden.
Three of the tracks are wholly instrumental affairs, combining traditional tunes with compositions by Spiers and Boden. “Hopkinson’s Favourite” is a particularly lively traditional piece, garnered from a Lakeland fiddler’s manuscript book — I’d love to know what that Lakeland fiddler would make of the thunderous brass arrangement that drives this particular arrangement along! The brass arrangements are a mighty force here, though the centrepiece of the music remains with Spiers’ melodeons and concertinas, and Boden’s fiddle — both utterly sparkling throughout.
I could almost write an in-depth review of each track on Burlesque; there’s just so much going on, and the whole concept is so exhilarating. This is an album that is sure to stand the test of time, being every bit as groundbreaking and significant as Fairport Convention’s Liege And Lief — it can stand fairly and squarely alongside such works and should deservedly claim the same status in our affections over time, if not immediately.
(Westpark, 2006)
