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But where that might be taken as a slight against their follow up, it’s certainly not here. This is an aural feast, and the perfect companion to the riotous Burlesque. The music hall elements, the jazzy, brash, funky and incredibly catchy turns on a variety of rum shanties, dire tales and ballads and all the inventiveness that marked their debut are here in spades. ‘Fakenham Fair’ is just glorious and the best of a fantastic bunch, the opening bars of ‘Widow’s Curse’ demand to be played and replayed, and ‘The Flight of the Folk Mutants’ is intriguing enough to warrant a mention for its name alone.

Messers Spiers and Bowden — the driving powers behind the eleven piece band — are riding a considerable high at the moment having secured Bellowhead as band in residence at London’s Southbank Centre and recently appearing as the centrepiece of this year’s Electric Proms, marking a level of success few bands who dig up some of the more obscure numbers from some presumably pretty dusty folk song books could hope for.

They arrived in a blaze of raw extrovert energy which got them noticed for the most exciting folk album of 2006 and subsequently two BBC Folk Awards, and Matachin is a sign they are here to stay. Another award-winner if ever there was one.

Matachin was released on 22 September on Navigator.

Links

Bellowhead website

Navigator Records