FOLK
Jon Boden
I
It’s hard to keep up with Jon Boden. Already halfway positive about that in a lot of ways, particularly now
to world domination as energetic lead singer with I’m living in the Yorkshire Dales. A lot of social ills are
the thrilling big band Bellowhead and fiddle playing tied up with this drug addiction we all have driving
singer with one of Brit folk’s most revered acts, Spiers cars – from a folk point of view, the lack of communal
& Boden, the impossibly tall and unfeasibly talented music-making. I was listening to an album by Chris
Boden has now made a solo concept album unlike T-T, which had an apocalyptic urban feel to it after
anything else he’s ever done before. How does he find the London bombings and it really grabbed me. That
the time? Where does he get all the creativity? inspired me to think about the rural counterpoint to
“It’s a bit of a squash but I did it between Bellowhead the apocalypse.
and Spiers & Boden gigs,” laughs Boden. “It’s
The first song he wrote for the new opus was Has
something I wanted to do and I needed to get it out…”
Been Cavalry, a melancholy ballad which now serves
If you thought you already knew what Jon Boden as a defiantly reflective postscript to the whole thing.
is all about, forget it. His entirely self-written new “I cut the grass again today…the diesel’s getting low...
album Songs From The Floodplain is a deep, complex, I don’t know how much longer it can last,” he sings
breathtakingly ambitious song cycle whose mournfully, before muttering about the neighbours
theme is, well, the end of the world as and defining the wider problem. “I don’t see things
we know it. Yet while certainly dark and their way, I won’t play along with the games they’re
challenging – it’s already being classified playing…you’ve seen one flood and you’ve seen
in some circles as a musical companion to them all…”
noted post-apocalyptic literature like Cormac
Leading up to that point we get evocative post-
McCarthy’s The Road and Russell Hoban’s
devastation scenarios and a hazardous journey
Ridley Walker – it isn’t nearly as doomy or
through a world of confusion populated by
gloomy as those reference points may imply.
shady characters like the preacher, the blind man
While its subject matter is profound
and the April Queen, when every common
and fatalistic, Boden regards the
perception of life as we know it is
impending crisis as grounds for long-
re-evaluated and time becomes
term positivity, and contends that,
measured by changing seasons and
while it tackles some hard questions
community rituals.
Songs From The Floodplain is
an ultimately optimistic work. Heavy in subject matter but often
Becoming a doting father and light in delivery, there are plenty of
moving to Yorkshire helped focus upbeat bouncy tracks like Beating The
his mind… Rounds and We Do What We Can to
offset the starkness. When the Walls
“I found myself thinking quite a
Come Tumbling Down is sinister, but
lot about what happens when
it does have a chorus; Dancing in the
the oil runs out. But I feel quite
Factory is set to a glorious traditional
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