A Fistful Of Twisted Folk II

This is the second year of the Twisted Folk Festival at the artsdepot, after a successful sell-out last July, and it has been expanded so that the music covers three stages – the Pentland Theatre, the smaller Studio Stage and the cafédepot stage. The Studio has been taken over by The Local, a monthly live music event usually held at the King’s Head in Crouch End, and run by Howard Monk, whilst cafédepot is hosted by Nick Luscombe, the Roots and Shoots DJ, with a couple of bands performing there during the evening.

Twisted Folk starts off like a nice afternoon at the theatre. People of all ages quietly chatting with their tea and muffins in the café. There are even toddlers. Twisted Folk is pretty darn civilised, and this is a festival where you can’t tell the bands from the punters.

Opening the musical events in the Pentland Theatre are the Yellow Moon Band. It’s early in the day, the place is still filling up, there’s a relaxed vibe and the Yellow Moon Band are playing with the same self-focussed abandon you reserve for bedroom jamming. It’s reminiscent of Buffalo Springfield or some-band else in 1960s psychedelia, with a tint of country. It’s good, it’s engaging, but it’s more suited to a hot and sunny afternoon dancing in the Greenfields at Glastonbury than a modern theatre in suburban North London. I want to love it, but it feels all wrong. Maybe it’s just too early in the day to be settling into such a culture shock. I want to be swaying in the summer breeze to this. It could have fallen off the soundtrack to a U.S. indie movie – I’m seeing hot deserts in Nevada. Memories of waking up outside in the hot morning sun, barely just sober again, squinting at the sunlight but still not ready to lift my head and get on with the day. Then as soon as I’m there, they’ve finished their short set.

The Local in the Studio kicks off with a four-piece band called Virgin Passages. They have an interesting sound with three guitars, one played with reverb and feedback, and a cellist who also sings pretty backing vocals and plays the melodica and a drum. The lead vocals though are languid, verging on listless, so their set is great for those that like their folk music dreamy and trancey but not very engaging.



Up next is the hirsute Dan Arborise, a singer-songwriter reminiscent of Nick Drake, with his complex guitar picking and playing, the mellow voice and a similar atmosphere created with his lyrics. Highlights of his short set are ‘Let Me Be’ and ‘To The Sea’, a track from his current album called ‘Around In Circles’. Dan, who lives in Devon, describes ‘To The Sea’ as an ode to the coast and the long guitar break in the song calls to mind rolling waves breaking on a shore – a very pleasant sound.


Lucy and the Caterpillar is Lucy Conroy from Burnley, who describes herself as “electro/comedy/grindcore” and Caterpillar is apparently the name of her acoustic guitar. From the back of the venue, she looks like a dainty Doris Day doll and stands in front of a microphone which is adorned with a feather boa and twinkling fairy lights. She has a crystal clear voice and all her songs are short and sweet. In ‘Alcoholic Dreams’ she makes the audience laugh with the line “...maybe I’m just pissed...”, incongruous amongst all the sugary words. Other highlights are ‘Kings Cross’ and a great song entitled ‘I Don’t Want Your Stupid Crisps’ including the line “...how do you like your toast in the morning? I like mine with a hug...”, just a shame Lucy’s set wasn’t a bit longer, she was totally captivating.


The worst thing about playing the Atrium is the fact that it houses the café/bar. Despite polite requests for the surrounding audience and bar queue to keep the chatter down during songs, it’s still hard to concentrate on John Smith. He can sing, he can play, the talent is clear but nearly half of his audience are deep in conversation, which, quite frankly is a travesty. His voice isn’t a world away from Gomez’s Ben Ottewell – gravelly and about 20 years beyond his 25. He looks like a sweet, unassuming well-presented lad, but his voice tells you he’s seen the world. So having settled into this interesting acoustic set, he throws us a curveball: he drops ‘No One Knows’ (Queens Of The Stone Age) into the mix. Heavy rock tracks played acoustically usually sound like just that, but this time it sounds like it was always this way. If he hadn’t tipped us off before singing, I would have struggled to place it – it works brilliantly.



This is one act today I’ll be keeping my eye on, if only for the reason that he got “...that was the most fun I had with my clothes on.” into a song. He was the special guest of John Martyn at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday night and has a string of shows coming up over the next few months – he is no doubt destined for great things.

Back to the Studio for Jonquil, an interesting prospect – a six piece of multi-instrumentalists from Oxford with drums, guitars, keyboard, melodica, fiddle, trumpet and funky- looking double bass. The sound sways between being discordant and wailful to something akin to exuberant pirate sea shanties. The band look less than enthusiastic - maybe put off their stride a bit as the venue is now only a third full but their final song ‘Lions’, with the handclaps and the whole band singing, is excellent.



I rush upstairs to see Adem who I’ve heard great things about. He’s a bit of a revelation – I’d expected a loud folk-rock band, similar to The Earlies and found a nondescript chap in t-shirt and jeans playing unplugged with his guitar in the middle of the audience. He sings a few songs including ‘Long Drive Home’ before returning to the stage to be joined by his backing band who accompany him on gentle percussion for ‘Let It Burn’. Adem plays the next song on a tiny music box. It was a gift from an artist friend who also gave him the paper strips to punch holes in and play through it but she had illustrated these with delightful drawings. He’s been reluctant to deface them but has punched one and it plays beautifully. Adem finishes with ‘These Are Your Friends’ from his debut album ‘Homesongs’. Before leaving the stage, he encourages us to look up the Homefires Festival, which he runs. It’s held at Conway Hall in London and is now in its fourth year.



Tom Brosseau is on next in the Studio - there’s a bit of a buzz about him and he’s been recommended by Adem. He’s a traditional acoustic folk poet from a bygone era in the style of Woody Guthrie or Dylan. His vocals have been compared to Jeff Buckley and his voice has a slight vibrato/wobbly edge to it similar to Devendra Banhart. Tom hails from Grand Forks, North Dakota so the landscapes and lifestyle there naturally inform his lyrics which seem a world away from North London. His set is educational and he tells us how to noodle for catfish (this is catching one with your bare hands) – don’t think we’ll be able to use that technique in the banks of the Thames – and then sings about “..how to grow a woman from the ground.”.



I wander back into the Studio theatre to see Alela Diane (who came highly recommended by The Earlies). She’s one cool chick from Portland Oregon, who can pull off geek chic as well as Kirsten Dunst, possibly better. Talented, well rounded, homespun songs that command you to listen – a little bit country, a little bit Americana. There are no gimmicks, nothing quirky but the whole set is completely engaging and ends in well-deserved rapturous applause.


The Earlies. The grand finale. They’re a band you can’t plonk into a genre since they span so many. I feel like I’ve heard it before, as though this is the music I imagined in my head as a child. This is the crescendo of the night. The silent head-nodding and foot-tapping has descended into arm-swaying and general wigging-out. It’s been a mellow day, filled with acoustic wonderment, but we’re now faced with a crazy 10-piece band who take you from psychedelia, to avant-garde rock and beyond. It’s a sound sensation. It’s eating rice cakes all week and then launching into a 10-course meal at Atelier. It’s quite the invigoration. They stomp through a hefty chunk of ‘The Enemy Chorus’, throwing in ‘Morning Wonder’ and ‘One Of Is Dead’ from ‘These Were The Earlies’.



The chap with the tuba puts it down and picks up one of those funny kid’s keyboards that only play by blowing through a tube. This is fun, and they’re all having it on stage - leaving their composed stage presence behind they throw their encore into a rock-fest, flinging themselves to their knees, guitars in hand, Spinal Tap-style. The party has started just as A Fistful Of Twisted Folk nears its end.

The Twisted Folk Festival has been a resounding success with something for everyone, from gentle acoustic singer-songwriters to noisy psychedelic folk-rock. Highly recommended next time around.

FUTURE GIGS

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