The harmonies are glorious, the wit is waspish. The songs are powerful, the banter is relentless and the audience is happy. What’s not to like?
It was the shock of the night in Cardiff last month when the BBC Folk award for best group (tacitly referred to as “Bellowhead’s Gong”) went to the Young’uns, a Teesside trio whose calling card is the unaccompanied voice. But, after this enthralling performance, it made perfect sense.
They opened with a big statement of intent: uplifting, soaring voices in a masterclass of harmony, based on an invigorating arrangement of Billy Bragg’s Between the Wars. There are rousing shanties aplenty throughout (one in French) to get the senses going.
Yet, between them, Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes have many strings to plentiful bows – not least a rampant humour which occasionally makes them appear more like standup comedians, mercilessly mocking one another and involving the audience at every turn.
Eagle, who lost his sight as a baby, walks on stage and collides painfully with a microphone. “I’m not really blind,” he jokes, “I just pretend for comic effect.”
Eagle’s accordion and keyboards and Hughes’s guitar add piquancy to a vivid range of contemporary material rooted in the grand tradition of political folk music. There are evocative songs by Graeme Miles (an anthemic Waiting for the Ferry) and Graham Moore (a vigorous Tom Paine’s Bones) although in Sean Cooney they have a superb – and so far – vastly underrated songwriter of their own, with a refined ear for a haunting melody and the pointed detail in a colourful tale. Brewster & Wagner tells of a British soldier rescued by a German sergeant in the first world war; the horrifying “honour killing” of Farzana Parveen is the painful subject of The Streets of Lahore; and, closer to home, the proud defiance of Stockton townsfolk is stirringly saluted on You Won’t Find Me on Benefits Street.
Arguing about what to play for an encore, they end up with two showstoppers. Eagle’s heartwarming party piece A Lovely Cup of Tea is a funny yet telling account of an intended English Defence League attack on a mosque being subverted by Muslim hospitality; and Sydney Carter’s John Ball has an irresistible chorus which the audience continues singing as they pile out into the streets of Camden. Folk group of the year? Spot on.
