If you close your eyes, apply a sepia filter to your imagination, and picture a middle-class Victorian house, there’s a fair chance that a piano will feature.
Pride of place in a drawing room. Polished and bedecked with pictures of brave old gents and winsome gals. Sheet music all ready for someone to entertain refined and polite society with a nationalistic ballad or a jolly song. It’s an image that is, almost certainly, as stiff and pompous, as joyless and contrived as anything, ever.
In typical Jon Boden style, he and his Remnant Kings, have taken this fusty image and torn right through it. The parlour ballads they create are living and breathing, they twinkle and swoop, they are vulnerable and vital.
Boden has taken the parlour ballad cannon and sifted it for gems. The crass and naff have been discarded and what’s left is a collection of brilliant songs.
On One April Morning [Roud 1546] sees Boden pick the very best from both the folk tradition and the parlour ballad tradition. The song is as familiar as time to most folkies but the arrangement is glorious. As with all of the best versions, the Remnant Kings force you to listen with new ears. Sally Hawkins’ oboe swoons into the welcoming arms of Boden’s voice. It is slow and lush, as fine and elegant as Victorian upholstery. That piano sitting in the centre of the room but never overwhelming. Boden becomes the greatest of drawing room hosts; he allows his guests to, occasionally, outshine him. Andy Bell’s production is flawless, embracing simplicity but building layers upon layers.
The crass and naff have been discarded and what’s left is a collection of brilliant songs.
He captures a feeling of immediacy and intimacy on Bonny Bunch of Roses [Roud 664] as Boden’s piano glimmers, shimmering in the gas light. Boden says that he’s not much of a piano player, but here it works wonderfully. The Kings are ranged around, lending harmonies until Sam Sweeney’s drums pick up the pace, then the voices are exultant. If this were a party piece then all Victorian parties could stop dead, as no collection of gentlemen could better it.
If there’s something utterly surprising about Parlour Ballads then it is the determined lack of flashiness, of a need to show off. Let’s face it, there have been times when Jon Boden just can’t help that inner ringmaster from slipping out, but not here. On Old Brown’s Daughter [Roud 1426], the first single from the album, he shows a beautiful lightness of touch, his voice achingly personal, his piano playing simply picking out the tune. He allows M.G Boulter’s pedal steel, a patter of drums and those gorgeous harmonies to carry the song. It is the same with Prentice Boy [Roud 263], everything is reigned in, the oboe creeps and curls amongst the drums as Boden lays before us the familiar tale of murder, desperation and nastiness. The ah-ah harmonies only seek to amplify the story, the colloquial lines make it real. It’s hard to picture a song like this in a cheery drawing room, crinolines would, surely, have been ruffled.
Boden becomes some kind of malevolent, Dickensian spirit… the pawnbroker in a battered hat, come to crash the politeness.
However, it’s of nothing when compared to the lascivious swing of Mortal Cares. Not only is it the best track on Parlour Ballads, it must be amongst the best songs of the year, full stop. It has a sinister, creeping London groove similar to some of those pseudo rockabilly/tiki bands from the ’90s. It’s sleazy, shadowy, and brilliant. There’s a piano flourish to start, then the whole cavalcade of dobro, pedal steel, electric guitar, Rob Harbron’s concertina, violin, and a couple of ah-ahs for good measure, Boden becomes some kind of malevolent, Dickensian spirit. He’s the pawnbroker in a battered hat, come to crash the politeness.
If that wasn’t enough to scandalise polite society then Danny Deever and a tale of military disgrace and hanging will have paper fans fluttering in disquiet. Slow and impossibly sad, Boden sounds wracked, emotion choking the story. As the inevitable death moves into view so the chords crash around him, everything hovers, waiting for the long drop. In order to soothe those fevered brows, Boden saves the most rousing version of himself for Rose of Allendale [Roud 1218], finally trying to compete with those gathered around his piano. His voice in tandem with Sam Sweeney’s fiddle is always a treat and so it is here. Finally, London Waterman ends this parlour concert in exactly the way that it should, with tenderness and beauty and ensuring that there’s not a dry eye in the house.
Boden might tell us that some old parlour ballads are all but forgotten, that some of them are fake or dross. Every single one here, though, will be familiar to most as there are countless versions in the folk archives. What Boden and the Remnant Kings have done is shine the gems and reclaim the drawing room piano as a fine folk instrument.
Parlour Ballads is out on Friday 27 September on digital, CD and vinyl.
Jon Boden & the Remnant Kings are touring from next week.
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