The Albion Band have been around for some forty years – well, ‘an’ Albion Band has, not this Albion Band. In 2011, on the fortieth anniversary of the band’s forming, leader Ashley Hutchings – also of British folk powerhouses Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention – handed the band over to his son Blair Dunlop.
The band, which throughout its forty-one year history has seen members take in giants of the UK folk scene like Martin Cathy (often quoted as being an influence on Bob Dylan and Paul Simon), has shed its skin completely for this re-imagining , bringing on board six brand new musicians from all around the UK folk scene – the first time in their history that bassist and vocalist Hutchings hasn’t been involved, with his son steering the band in a new direction.
Thus bringing us to this, The Vice of the People, the debut album by the ‘New’ Albion Band, if you will. The band sets out their stall with opener ‘Intro: A Quarter Hour of Fame’ – “A quarter hour is all we want, the prize we clamour for” says all that you need to know about this album. It’s as much a statement of intent as it is a social commentary from the new collective, who throughout the album display a far more politically conscious sound than their elders – there’s a lot less songs along the lines of ‘Poor Old Horse’ and a lot more like the fantastic ‘Coalville’, a lament about the loss of ‘a town built for miners, on money made of coal’ penned by Katriona Gilmore.
It is the songs that most prominently feature Gilmore that stand out the most on the album. From ‘Coalville’ to ‘How Many Miles to Babylon?’, a duet featuring Gilmore and guitarist Graeme Davenport. The band bridge the gap between the different incarnations of The Albion Band with a reworking of original band members Francois Villon and Phil Beer’s ‘Set Their Mouths to Twisting’.
There’s even time for the band to cover Nik Kershaw’s 1984 album track ‘Faces’ – but this bizzare folk interpretation of Kershaw’s new wave, synth laden track just seems out of place with the rest of their songs. Fortunately, there aren’t many bizarre u-turns from the band in this vein, and they finish strongly with perhaps three of the finest songs on the record – the mournful ‘Adieu to Old England’, the thumping ‘One More Day’ and the closer, ‘Wake a Little Wiser’.
The album isn’t a bad one; in fact, it’s a good attempt at a modern day imagining of the band’s original folk sound. It remains to be seen whether the adoption of The Albion Band name will be a help or a hindrance for the group – those familiar with the original Albion Band may well see this as a simple cash-in on a once famous folk group, while the younger ears looking for folk music would have been just as well served with a band named, well, anything but The Albion Band. It’s a bold move, but one that might have mixed consequences.