Pandemonium: The Essential Bellowhead

The bad news is that, after 11 years, the 11 members of the great English folk big-band Bellowhead are going their separate ways. The good news is that they have cast their ears over their back catalogue and from their five studio albums selected 13 of their best-loved tracks. It is a delight from start (fan favourite ‘New York Girls’) to finish (another fan favourite ‘London Town’). Both songs celebrate and warn against spirited women of wit and worldly intent. In between them rolls a torrent of songs, many of them shanties. Such material is generally prized for the gusto with which they can be sung, rather than their musical interest. But Bellowhead both sing with great gusto and explore the intrigue and drama of their narratives, with arrangements that give full expression to them musically. Witness the percussion and fiddle introduction to both ‘10,000 Miles Away’ and ‘Roll Alabama’, or the glorious oboe and brass that kick off ‘Fakenham Fair’.

The songs build and collapse and rise again in a way that is constantly captivating, the orchestrations surrounding and elevating Jon Boden's vocals. His rich vibrato, a homage to Peter Bellamy, manages to be at once rock-god stirring, yet expressively fragile. Pandemonium is the essential Bellowhead. I doubt we’ll hear and see their like again: such imagination, such ambition, such fun.