Bellowhead’s 2011 tour hit Leeds Met SU last Sunday. The support act, Ahab, warmed the crowd pleasingly but it was after a brief interlude, where John Spiers (accordion) ventured onto stage in a fake beard to adjust his instruments, that the main act appeared. Despite John Boden getting off to a bad start with his introductory ‘Hello Manchester’ the hour and a half set (plus encores), showed the band’s four BBC Best Live Band awards were well earned.
The real wonder was that an eleven piece group could produce such a slick dynamic, both within songs and between pieces. The brass section and string section were balanced perfectly, highlighted by the atmospheric ‘Amsterdam’. Whilst at the other end of the spectrum the cacophonous ‘Little Sally Racket’ brought the whole ensemble together in a sound that resembled punk more than folk. The older section of this mixed crowd seemed to enjoy this mix of material. The set drew heavily on the recent successes of their award winning album ‘Hedonism’ and rightly they played ‘New York Girls’ then finishing the set-proper with ‘The Rochdale Coconut Dance’, a real gem from the bands seminal work E.P.Onymous. These folkier dance numbers seemed to get the crowd on their feet, more so than some of the more progressive recent material.
The overriding impression of the band was of a group of people who truly love performing live. The band’s exuberance and instrument swapping antics during ‘Sloe Gin’ filled the room with a party atmosphere. At one point there was a small shower of cutlery as one of Pete Flood’s (percussion) ‘instruments’ exploded and at another Benji Kirkpatrick (guitar, mandolin, bazouki) climbed on top the speakers only to leap back to the stage: who said folk can’t be rock and roll? People who would pigeon-hole traditional folk music as dull and outdated need only come and see one of Bellowhead’s crowd pleasing live performances to be converted.