Goblin Band – A Loaf Of Wax (Live From MOTH Club): Album Review

By Seuras Og on 13th November 2025 • ( Leave a comment )

A punky DIY ethos inhabits this devisioning and preconstruction of traditional folk, proudly embracing the songs of a London gutter, circa 1700, from Goblin Band.

Release Date: 14th November 2025

Label: Broadside Hacks Recordings

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

TRANSFIXED

To say this has been widely anticipated isn’t the half of it, both generally and personally. Generally, it has been the way that this ragbag collection of waifs and strays, that being the image they present, have so swiftly and so strongly ingratiated themselves with the elders of the folk tradition and beyond. When Martin Carthy says “they can play and they can sing and they’re fearless“, with Paul McCartney being another apparent fan, dropping by to play harmonica at rehearsals, they have to be doing something right. And personally, with even only part of a performance caught, at Hartlepool Folk Fest, last month, I was then transfixed.

WTF?

This is their first full length release, and the band has trimmed down a bit from the six-piece that put out an EP, Come Slack Your Horse, in May of last year. Now a quartet of Alice Beadle, Gwena Harman, Rowan Gatherer and Sonny Brazil, they tackle all manner of vintage instrumentation, encompassing fiddle, accordion, hurdy gurdy and recorders, with pipe organ and a solitary drum for additional effect. That the album is live is deliberate, to convey quite the swell of acclaim they surf. The record has the crowd noise more of an arena in downtown L.A., rather than a 300 capacity hall in a part of Hackney, still yet to be gentrified and developed. Cheering for an acoustic band playing the songs of old(e) England and dressed by Dickens? WTF?

It is that crowd noise you hear first, with whoops and ululating yowls, as the show opens. with a quasi-orchestral drone. Hurdy gurdy gradually makes itself apparent, alongside the intermittent saw of a fiddle, the latter then seeking some deep and rich tones. A box is squeezing somewhere between them. The crowd silenced, a drum beating and a rhythmic marching melody brings them back to life. A dramatic start, the processional accelerating, it ends as suddenly as it brakes, on a single thwack . This is (the) Goblin Theme. Cue more audience frenzy.

A SHOCK TO THOSE UNACCUSTOMED

Rosin The Bow is the first song, which ambles out on a bed of fiddle and concertina. A drinking song, I gather, the vocal of Rowan Gatherer may prove a shock to those unaccustomed, say, to this style of singing. Very much of the Jon Boden school of warble and waver, it can take a stanza or two to accomodate, but stick with it. There are moments when he seems about to break into laughter, possibly at his own affectation, but it fits well the material.

Alice Beadle’s fiddle shows her to be expert scaffolding for the vocals, and she provides most of the counterpoint instrumental melodies, with the concertina of Sonny Brazil supplying a rhythmic propulsion. Drummer, a single parade drum, Gwenna Harman, the occasional provider of pump organ, stands this one out, adding, with Brazil, some ragged harmonies. It’s a good opener, and was certainly well appreciated, that night in Hackney.

With a switch to accordion, it is Brazil who then picks up the vocal for Willie’s Lady, a cleaner and more ernest voice. Recorders and fiddle join in, as does the drum. The recorder is likely from Gatherer, but the notes indicate a second such instrument, present and coming from guest, Otto Hasmi. A pell mell attack on the broadsheet ballad, it is taken at breakneck speed, and converts any wavering opinion as to their authenticity. All Among The Barley is slower, with Gatherer back on vocal duties, as it becomes a mournful meander through the tradition. There is nothing remotely “new’ here, the band approach defiantly retro. Folk rock it ain’t.

ATTRACTIVELY UNSTRUCTURED

Instrumental time, this comes in the form of the paired Tuppeny Nudgers/Puddle Of Newts, which evoke that time when the Albion Band were embracing renaissance dance themes, or posssibly more the Hutchings/Kirkpatrick Compleat Dancing Master, without the electric rhythm section. I was recently bemoaning the dearth of hurdy gurdy these days; well, there are lashings of it here. Harman was off sick for Hartlepool, so it is here a delight to hear her attractively unstructured voice, for The Bitter Withy. A cross between a young Shirley Collins and a less angry Nicola Kearey (Stick in The Wheel), she has a lovely tone. A hypnotic fiddle motif hovers behind her, as a treble recorder tootles like a whistle. It is simply superb, with the moment of silence ahead the applause, displaying the concentration given to her by the room.

Random squeezy notes start off Worms, before fiddle picks out a nightmare variant of Teddy Bear’s Picnic, sticking with that for the choral vocals: “the worms crawl in, and the worms crawl out“. Even if you are unfamiliar with this Pogues’ song,there is little doubt as to where they are crawling, not least as macabre yelps and maniacal laughter encroach. Lord only knows how they are enacting this out, but it sounds fun. The Wild Wild Berry is then led again by Harman’s keening measured wail, a touch of Radie Peat creeping in, maximised further by the droning accompaniment. Harmonies drift in at lower register, before the hurdy gurdy dials up the momentum. Jings, if I thought the band good without Harman, with her they are exceptional.

DISORDERLY JACKANAPES

Recorders and box lilt in for Hard Working Boater, swaggering percussion conveying the sway of the song. Brazil is the voice once more, but it as they and Gatherer add their chalk and cheese that it fully ignites. As Widecombe Fair fires up, a sly wonder comes as to whether the band do ceilidhs or whether that would be to constricting, too orderly for their disorderly jackanapes. This song, the best known, possibly, of those presented, this packs in rather more doggerel than perhaps any version learnt and sung in the infants, and the singers act it all out with a droll conviction.

POLISH & PANACHE

I now really want to see this band again. The promise offered by the abbreviated trio is duly delivered in proverbial spades, and it is clear they have the polish to go far. And, in those parts where the polish is scuffed, the panache. Not always a fan of live records, this is one where it was the only way the band could be portrayed so well and so vividly. If punk rock had been around in regency times, drawn from the fringes and with a consequent greater sense of inclusivity, this is how it would sound.

Here’s Rosin The Beau, too from the MOTH club.