Post-apocalyptic melodies from former Bellowhead singer
Jon Boden, at the North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford, on Saturday, February 18. Review by JON LEWIS
Oxford has been an influential city for Jon Boden, but the key influence for the current tour is the Peak District where he now lives.
The gig revolves around his Songs from the Floodplain trilogy of post-apocalyptic albums where he envisages a world that has been catastrophically altered by global warming.
Boden is a charismatic storyteller, and each song is prefaced by insights into the songs. Jordan, a hit from Bellowhead’s album Burlesque is heard anew, stripped down, introducing a theme that runs through the performance, that of Bible-influenced lyrics.
The telling chorus that ‘Jordan is a hard road to travel, I believe’ reflects the central concept of the last of the trilogy The Last Mile Home, where an elderly couple follow their children and communities to the coast to escape the barren landscape of the Peak District. Boden charmingly suggests they walk the remnants of the M18 motorway, a way rather than a road.
While the frame is catastrophic, the songs are filled with hope. Numbers like We Do What We Can are jolly enough for Boden to encourage the audience to sing the chorus, which he repeats to great effect throughout the show. In All Hang Down the verses are written by Boden, but the chorus of ‘we’ll roll’, originally written by the Salvation Army, is sung harmoniously in the auditorium.
Intriguingly, the lyrics in the chorus, Boden tells us, have transformed from temperance warning to popular drinking number and sea shanty.
Another theme runs through the show, shipwrecks. In the first half there’s the sad tale, the Rose in June telling of a disastrous sinking of a herring fishing boat off Scotland in a storm, whilst in the second half, a version of Roll Alabama, from Bellowhead’s album Revival, tells the story of the British aid to the Confederates in the American Civil War in donating a warship to the pro-Slavers. Boden wryly says it’s OK to cheer as the boat sinks.
Boden reminds us that folk music is about the future as well as the past.
