Graeme Virtue 

Trembling Bells – review

Trembling Bells might be heading for the mainstream, but they're still besotted with pastoral byways, says Graeme Virtue
  
  


In our post-Mumford age, the term "folk-rock" suggests something reedy and pastoral, possibly featuring a banjo. Trembling Bells burrow deeper into both genres, channelling energies ancient, elemental and, crucially, loud. In the past year, they've collaborated and toured with both Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band and Bonnie Prince Billy, fellow travellers in every sense, but even as a four-piece they still make an impressive racket.

This is nominally a hometown gig and the final date of a fairly sprawling tour. The mood is celebratory, even giddy. The breakup duet Ain't Nothing Wrong With a Little Longing is already darkly witty, a snare-on-the-beat freakout that sees singer Lavinia Blackwall embracing "gin oblivion". But drummer and bandleader Alex Neilson also sneaks in key lines from Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe, an Exocet missile of a song, which slot in surprisingly well.

Trembling Bells have released an album a year since 2009, and show no signs of deceleration. They play three new songs, including The Bells of Burford, an organ-heavy tribute to the medieval town in the Cotswolds, and Wide Majestic Aire, a willowy lament named for the river in Leeds. Such excursions into psychogeography have long been part of the band's rambling spirit; the woozy groove of Otley Rock Oracle, from their third album The Constant Pageant, sounds particularly fantastic, like a faerie-friendly Stereolab spiked with the lurid Italian prog of Goblin.

For the encore, Neilson and Blackwall deputise members of support band Muldoon's Picnic for Tuning Fork of the Earth, a shivery a capella that demonstrates they can wield silence as effectively as their psych-folk noise. With such an enviable workrate, it might seem like Trembling Bells are marching inexorably towards the mainstream. For now, though, they don't seem that interested in taking any shortcuts, preferring picturesque byways and gnarly leylines.

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*