Moseley Folk Festival, an idyllic delight within gritty
inner suburbia. A place where with one swivel of the head you can digest a near
continual diet of eclectic music over the course of thirty hours. A festival
with a difference, reaching out across a broad range of clientele. It attracts
the dedicated, the casual, the young and the seasoned, but most all it provides
a fitting festival finale for the folks of Birmingham and beyond on the first
weekend of September.
The 2016 offering retained the blueprint precedent ensuring
a spritely mix of the popular, the frivolous, the moving and the influential.
It would be a tough ask to buy into the whole package, but that is likely not the
organiser’s ideal. It is often wondered whether the high profile headliners are
essential for festival viability and perhaps that notion will remain eternally
unanswered. Anyhow the true spirit of Moseley Folk Festival from a personal
perspective lies within a band of bookings threaded by an intense bout of
devoted observation. Artists that reward a listener digging a little deeper.
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| Laura Gibson |
Without venturing too far into the negative void of critical
territory, the final thoughts of comparing The Proclaimers with The Jayhawks,
Laura Gibson and the Sam Beam/Jesca Hoop duet went a long way down the route of
personal summation. These four artists were among the Sunday twin stage
showcase. A day where the weather settled into an acceptable September groove
after the damp start to the previous day. This was also a day where the above
three bracketed acts were seen live for the first time and created a mind
indent of sunken treasure. The odd one out of the trio was Laura Gibson who
only flashed across my horizon in the midst of this festival booking. With
everything to gain from a blank canvas, and the heavy expectation of the heady
new album EMPIRE BUILDER, Laura’s vocals and sound floated around Moseley Park
like a celestial haze. Once again the comparison with Johanna and Klara of
First Aid Kit is undeniable. When the dust settles on the year’s festival
season and memories re-organise themselves, this half hour set will find its
rightful place.
Before we continue to reflect on the music that matters, a
quick mention for the three headliners. Preceding The Proclaimers by a day was
The Coral with their slightly more youthful attraction and fairly newbie status
as a retro act. A band at their peak when my mind was musically diverted
elsewhere, they were given an open intriguing listen and probably peaked with the
more indulgent new material. If The Proclaimers are the eighties, The Coral are
the noughties, then the early nineties saw The Levellers at their commercial peak.
Their brand of high octane folk/indie/punk rolled back the years on Friday
night, mosh pit et al.
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| Sam Lee |
The word ‘folk’ has just been used and Moseley does intermittently
indulge the purists. Sam Lee thrives as the quintessential oxymoron. A staunch
contemporary traditionalist steeped in the art of reviving song, forever mining
the communities of England. A sun drenched Friday afternoon was the perfect
setting for Sam who improvised in the festival’s opportune moment of continuing
his set in the audience after the strict curfew was reached. It has to be said
at this point that the impeccable timing of the sets is a credit to the guys
behind the scene at this festival, who maximise the absolute potential of the
twin stage opportunity. Two iconic folk artists featured on Sunday afternoon
with Steve Tilston marking the ‘one man and his guitar plus a bucketful of fine
songs card’ and Jacqui McShee leading her 2016 version of Pentangle defined by
some sultry sax drifting across the park and coaxing a slither of sunshine to
briefly appear.
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| Phospherescent |
Let’s go back to The Jayhawks and enter the world of classic
Americana alt-country rock which is welcome at any folk festival. Well fellow
American band Dawes did state at a festival last year that ‘strip away all the
amplification and what is left is just a simple folk song’. What The Jayhawks
did remind everybody this year is the sheer magic of their three pronged
cultured guitar attack with acoustic and pedal steel periodically mixing it
with the omnipresent electric and bass. This was also a timely reminder of
their status as a pioneering band of alt-country rock with Gary Louris leading
this 2016 re-incarnation as slick as you would expect. Twenty four hours
earlier another Americana rock band adorned the main stage with Phosphorescent
raising the tempo in an alluring concoction of rousing guitar, keys and an impeccable
beat. Matthew Houck continues to create a rock ‘n’ roll furrow for the music of
his moniker to flourish and his dedicated fans lapped up every song, riff and
effect from the sixty minute set. Before we leave this style, a quick mention
for London based Treetop Flyers who returned to Moseley and headlined the
smaller neighbouring Lunar Stage on Saturday evening. These boys continue to
prosper as one of the UK’s leading alt-country rock Americana bands and seriously
impress with a marvellous melange of guitar, keyboards and great songs; many found
on their imposing new album PALOMINO.
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| Billy Bragg |
Another act returning to Moseley Folk Festival after a few
years break was Billy Bragg. Last time he was the Sunday headliner and appeared
solo. This year there was a slight downgrading in stage time with a Friday
early evening slot, but absolutely no diminishing of the fire, fury and assault
on the now post-Brexit fear of cynicism. This was also the year where Billy’s
Americana influence takes on a more sound and vision stance, dressed in cowboy
shirt and joined by one of the UK’s leading pedal steel guitarists, CJ Hillman.
The structure, rhetoric and song selection remains intact, as does the Woody
Guthrie appreciation, total fan adulation and the verse dedicated to Kirsty
MacColl. No American railroad songs this evening, those will come in November.
'New England',
'The Mikman of Human Kindness' and '
Sexuality' have been festival favourites for years and their audience appeal shows no sign receding, just as the need for artistic political fight.
There will always be a local flavour to the Moseley Folk
Festival and 2016 was no different. Prominent Birmingham singer-songwriter Dan
Whitehouse was awarded a main stage slot on Friday afternoon and used the set
to share some songs from his freshly released album. Sunday afternoon saw a
tribute to the late and extremely popular Birmingham musician Paul Murphy with
some of the artists who had worked with him curating a tribute on the Lunar
Stage. These included singer-songwriter Katie Bennett and architect of an
excellent new album this year, Abi Budgen who played a solo set on the same
stage last year and Amit Dattani, a regular on the Birmingham music scene with
his band Mellow Peaches.
As we head towards the final detailed festival mentions, it’s
full respect to every artist, musician, songwriter and performer who appeared
across the weekend. Each playing the part of keeping the spirit of live music
alive and having the creative intent to share their work with an audience, of
which many will find their niche.
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| Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop |
Four artists left to digest and let’s first return to one
mentioned earlier. Sam Beam in his Iron and Wine guise will need little introduction
to fans of folk Americana rock, but a different side to him was introduced this
year as his acclaimed duet act with fellow American songwriter Jesca Hoop
emerged as a late festival booking. The broadsheet equivalent of the music
press heralded the release of the duo’s first album earlier this year and LOVE LETTER
FOR FIRE formed an integral part of their hour-long Sunday teatime set.
Identifying the synchronicity of their voices appears an easy find having now
witnessed the duo perform from a near distance. The music was a triumph of
collaboration, tantalising the ear buds of serious song listeners and emanating
an aura of compatible marvel.
‘Islands in
the Stream’ and
‘Love is a Stranger’
will never sound the same again, but the beautiful original music of Sam Beam
and Jesca Hoop has an endless potential to prosper, other projects permitting.
However it is entirely relevant in the present.
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| This is the Kit |
Oysterband, Dawn Landes and This is the Kit represents three
entirely different strands of the Moseley Folk Festival presentation and each stand
the test of their merit. Not a trio you will likely see linked again and they
merely independently exist as an entity to highlight the favourite moments of
the festival. Oysterband should not be overly displeased with the tag ‘stalwart’
after countless years on the folk circuit. Their simplistic approach to good
time festival music eliminates any need for implicit detection and ‘getting’
this band from an hour long set is entirely possible. This is the Kit, the
alias of British musician Kate Stables, is a much more intriguing observation
and listen. The music takes you into a wonderful mesmerising world of
indie-folk, delicate in its perception and endearing with a wave of emotion.
Occasionally, the ethereal sound is injected with an electric explosion just to
keep folk on their toes. In contrast to the other two home grown acts, Dawn
Landes is a Kentucky based country folk singer who flew an isolated flag for
this style of music over the weekend. Dawn has been a regular visitor to our
shores over the last few years and her band of followers was no doubt enhanced
after her Saturday afternoon set on the Lunar Stage.
