What a disappointment

There's disappointing and then there's desperately disappointing, and the new Bellowhead album 'Hedonism' falls firmly into the latter category.  It does so because it was high on my list of the most eagerly awaited albums of 2011 - after all, their previous efforts showed them taking traditional folk and ballads in a new and innovative direction and they hadn't a bad track to their name.  And then this!




The problem is simple and proves that democracy can be very over-rated.  Bellowhead have 11 members (I think) and they are the best live band I have ever seen, and I've seen plenty of good ones over the years.  The first time I saw them I sat in utter disbelief that something as radical and vibrant could still be done to old tunes.  However the band dress it up, Bellowhead is a vehicle for the extraordinary talents of Winchester's Jon Boden and, to a lesser extent, his colleague John Spiers - they tour as a duo, Spiers and Boden, and are sensational.  The rest of Bellowhead's members are highly talented multi-instrumentalists, but there isn't another Boden amongst them. 

Too often on Hedonism the feeling is left that everyone is being given their calculated share of the action, and sadly it detracts from what should have been a great album.  There are also a couple of total stinkers amongst the tracks on the album: as an example, 'Little Sally Racket' shouldn't ever have been let loose for public consumption.

For the first time I found myself wondering whether Bellowhead has legs as a project, and whether Spiers and Boden backed by a dozen session musicians wouldn't be a better idea.  I still have the earlier Bellowhead albums to fall back on, and there are some bits of Hedonism that do match up to that standard - invariably they are the ones where they stick to what they are excellent at, and bin the experimental side of things.

It won't stop me going to see them live - in fact I am doing precisely that in November when they play Salisbury City Hall - but equally, it won't alleviate my dreadful disappointment at the patchy album they've just released.