UFQ go the full MPG for this exhilarating return to active service, firing on all cylinders and more.

Release Date: 22nd March 2024

Label: SAE Records

Format: CD / digital

It’s been a while, but Urban Folk Quartet denounce any sense of their dissolution with this vivid bounce back. Mind you, even with a near 10 year gap between studio albums, discounting 2016’s live offering, that is nothing these days, given all the relatively recent and very real excuses dealt the world. Thus, and fully understandably, this release has been a good five years in genesis. The death of unofficial 5th member, studio bassist, Sal Broughton, some 16 months ago, also hit hard. So this, album number seven, has, by necessity, a few changes, if consolidating the ongoing evolution of the band.

Changes? Well, check the constancies first; it is still the same four piece of Joe Broughton, Paloma Trigás, Tom Chapman and Dan Walsh at the heart of the band. Broughton, playing anything and everything, remains the polymath at the helm, a veteran of the Albion Band and the instigator of the remarkable Folk Enemble, formed out of Birmingham Conservatoire’s folk degree, anything up to 50 musicians on stage at any one time, culled from the best of the undergraduate and graduate population. He also produces this record. Trigás is his wife, a remarkable fiddler, from Spain’s Celtic nation of Galicia, and Chapman is an inventive and versatile percussionist, perhaps most at home on the cajon, and each have track records encompassing bands from Altan and Sharron Shannon to work with Chris While & Julie Matthews, more of which later. Walsh? Well, we know him well, the banjo king, as at home with clawhammer and bluegrass as he is with Irish 5 string styles. We reviewed his last release here.

First out the hat is Walsh’s spunky re-invention of Solsbury Hill, Peter Gabriel’s solo debut from, gulp, 1977. (For perspective, Broughton was then just one year old…..). Instantly familiar, there are still enough sparkles that add a folk/jazz tang to the song. Banjo is indeed the lead instrument, but think Bela Fleck rather than Earl Scruggs. With paired fiddles swooping in, a gentle clatter of cajon, aka the Peruvian bodhran, then creeps alongside. Paired fiddles, did I say, there being actually three, the third, alongside Trigás and Broughton being that of their daughter, Sabela. (As in, the family that fiddles together etc? ) There is also some deliciously bubbly bass, worth mentioning if only to note it comes from the dexterous fingers of, no less, guest, Dave Pegg, only to keen to fill in for Broughton’s late younger brother. It’s a great version.

Next up it comes the intricate wending and weaving of One Day You’ll Be Right, paired with The Clock. two pieces joined by each being reflections on time. With Broughton now trebling on bass and guitar, as well as fiddle, the first part is a slower laid back acceptance of the inevitability, the second a pell mell scarper, trying to catch up, each within a broad category of Celtic bluegrass. Starting with an almost Irish stepdance percussion figure, the instruments come together into a leisurely counterpointed jig, ahead the swift acceleration into a managed manic Appalachiana. Again, it is the interplay that catches the ear, little in the way of any unisonic direction. Jim Mills’ Coal Minin’ Man follows, a slow Western ballad, Walsh on vocals once more, and one of Sal Broughton’s last bass parts. The slow lope of banjo drives the song, with a further Broughton brother, Ben, adding some campfire slide guitar. And, from the aforementioned While & Matthews, backing vocals, blissfully smooth, come from Chris While, this time with her daughter, Kellie. (Both, too, of course, have an Albion Band heritage from the Ashley Hutchings finishing school for folk-rock.)

Trigás opens up Before Your Eyes, largely her own composition, with some mournful moorish fiddle. Moreish, also, I might add, before there is a distinct sidesways turn into Walsh’s Whiplash Reel, where his instrument sounds more like a sitar, the notes bending into that cadence with the countercultural ease, that can only be derived from years of practice. It is actually already a highpoint of his solo repertoire, but here, with the accompaniment, it flows to an even higher level, not least as the two themes vie, swapping between each other. Sticking with an Indian flavour, at least in name, Roger Wilson’s appropriation, let’s say, of the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken, and here entitled Indian Tea, adds a choral addendum that takes the sentiments still further. Just the quartet here, Trigás now adds her vocal to that of Walsh, hubby Joe on bass and guitar. A skittery arrangement, call me odd, but it is Crosby, Stills and Nash that I hear here, and it is a languid and bucolic take.

Turning Point/High Hopes/Driving Force is a triptych of tunes, again largely from Trigás, which start with quite a funky rhythm, courtesy Sal Broughton’s bassline and Chapman’s idiosyncratic kit. Trigás’ fiddle swoops forth, the rhythm section making a complex pattern beneath her. As the second tune speeds, again it is the cross-rhythms that strike the hardest, as the tune strays into lost harmonium territory. Leaving the best to last, Walsh’s banjo then leaps off toward the close, sounding now more like a mandolin. As it approaches the end, there is a superb almost Latino percussion breakdown, the whole ensemble now firing like a cutlery accident in a wind tunnel. Triffic, and, were it not the credits stating otherwise, the bassline is so typically ‘Peggy’ as to defy it not being so, making Broughton’s death, at 30, all the more tragic.

It is Pegg on the next track, with Chris while sharing the vocals with Walsh. An old American folk song, Long Time Traveller, and based on an old welsh hymn tune, it feels a distant relative of Shady Grave, hence maybe the ease with which Pegg slots into the groove. (Shady Grove is the tune his band use for Matty Groves.) It is a grand track and it really feels that the band are a confident and competent unit, sounding also if they are fully enjoying that position of attainment. And, if I have failed to say, Trigás plays a mean old fiddle, both soaring and chopping, as happy with either, with the insertion of her own tune, Heading Home, into the melody line.

Which allows time only for the closing set, three instrumentals, together called Circus Tunes. The circus was Broughton’s passion between 6 and 14, spending school holidays, literally, running away with one circus or another, acquiring skills. Indeed, had big bro’ Ben not lured him into music, perhaps there he would still be, eating fire on a unicycle, on a highwire, high above our heads. It is with a distinct Eastern European fix that it starts, Sal Broughton’s bass linking with Chapman’s percussion to provide a safety net for fiddles, guitar and mandolin to play together. A further sound is in the mix, giving quite the contrast, being the bass clarinet of Rosie Rutherford. The tune then breaks into folk-rock central, for a reel good time, Sal Broughton again providing Pegg-worthy bass, a final stanza getting faster still, the combination of instruments sounding like an electric prog band in full flight. In the closing minute, fiddle and mandolin collide against a walking bass and it couldn’t be much better.

I have seen Urban Folk Quartet live on a couple of occasions, each some time ago, and on each occasion found a slight mismatch between the precision of playing and the resultant soul, the one more apparent than the other. On the strength of this I would say that is no longer the case, there being more than enough heart here, now sufficient to match the head. And that, frankly, is the only change here.

It has to be Solsbury Hill, really, doesn’t it!

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