What a fine idea folk duo John Spiers and Jon Boden had in 2004. Stuck in traffic on the M25, the pair hit upon the idea of expanding their pared squeezebox and vocal revivals and forming a big band. Sometimes efforts to soup up folk can achieve their stated aim too well - i.e. you end up with soup; too many cooks too often spoil the broth. Thankfully that's far from the case here as the 11-piece group serve up a heady fusion over a baker's dozen tracks which transpose English folk to a myriad locations.

The opening 'Rigs of the Time' is a traditional song from the Napoleonic era yet, setting it in 5/4, Spiers and Boden manage to make it sound like Kurt Weill done by cabaret cranks the Tiger Lillies. 'Jordan' which follows is like a medieval spiritual, if that's possible, with a great unison chorus from the whole band, while 'Across the Line' has a brilliant flourish of a flute solo that reminds you just how English (not to say folky) Islands-era King Crimson sounded. And if ever Boden's vocals sound a little reedy, they are beautifully cracked and drunken on 'Flash Company', which pitches a traditional tune against off-kilter New Orleans jazz.

Add to that the township jive of old fave 'London Town' and the gypsy leanings of 'The Outlandish Knight', and you know you've struck gold. Bound to be a record of the year.

Recommended: 'Rigs of the Time'; 'Flash Company'; 'The Outlandish Knight'

SONGLINES MAGAZINE
I’ll stick my head above the parapet for Burlesque: this is the most important album of English traditional music since Fairport Convention’s Liege & Lief. It’s even more significant. Fairport, with electric instruments and attitude, revitalised the repertoire. Nonetheless there’s an austere aspect to that groundbreaking record, a sense that, really, the song should not be performed so much as presented. Bellowhead disagree entirely and marshal their formidable resources to explore the musical, lyrical and theatrical potential of the songs and tunes. The group are described as a folk big band. Actually, they’re a huge band. Between them the 11 musicians play more than 20 instruments, and six of them sing. The horn section includes a sousaphone, the reeds a bass clarinet. There’s a frying pan amidst the percussion, a cello in the strings and, at the core, are the melodeons of John Spiers, Jon Boden’s fiddle (one of four) and his vibrant, not to say vibrating, vocals.
The arrangements and performances are stunning. ‘Death and the Lady’ encompasses both bebop and minimalism. ‘The Outlandish Knight’ expresses sonically the strange power of the words. ‘Courting too Slow’ is a triumph of melancholy, and the tunes such as ‘Frog’s Legs and Dragon’s Teeth’ are like a fine pint – delicious and satisfying.
A few days after Bellowhead appeared on the main stage, a friend who witnessed them take WOMAD by storm buttonholed me: they had the rich textures of a Cuban band, she insisted, the rhythmic dexterity of a Brazilian outfit and the melodic exuberance of an African combo. She was incredulous because this was, after all, English folk music. And English music can’t be world music, can it? Bellowhead have finally blasted that tired old prejudice into oblivion.
Julian May

THE SUN – Oct 13th 2006
4.5 stars

If you thought folk music was all about earnest solitary figures with acoustic guitars, think again.

Bellowhead are an 11-piece folk “orchestra” who create riots of colourful sounds.  They are the brainchild of Jon Boden and John Spiers and Burlesque is their ravishing debut album.

Taking English folk as the template, they throw everything but the kitchen sink at this project – banjo, brass, bagpipes, and, er, a frying pan to name but a few instruments.  The result is that these reinterpretations of trad songs veer in all sorts of directions – decadent music hall, country barn dances, jazzy free-form workouts.

However, the highlight might just be Boden’s tremulous, lonesome vocal on Courting Too Slow.

MOJO (5 star review)

     “Though only a five-track EP, the first offering of the Boden & Spiers big band is just too good to be allowed to skulk in the shadows. The likes of Paul Sartin (fiddle) and Benji Kirkpatrick (guitar/bouzouki) join a full ­blooded horn section to nudge the already formidable B&S energy quota to overload and they re-work Prickle Eye Bush and Copshawhole Fair, two of the best tracks on the Bellow album, into a thrilling frenzy. If this is a portent of folk music in 2005, then bring it on...”

FROOTS MAGAZINE

     "We're not really looking for a review on this, we just thought you might like to hear it..." read the note from Mr Boden and Mr Spiers enclosed with this release, available only on their website. It is, after all, only an EP and some of the tracks have already been recorded, albeit in different form, on their last duo album, Bellow. Well, sod you Boden & Spiers, we are reviewing it. And what's more, we've invited all the neighbours along to review it with us. Except that they've gone straight for the sherry and were last seen dancing on the kitchen table.
      Bellowhead are, of course, the new Boden & Spiers big band who blew away everyone I've talked to who survived Sidmouth 2004; with eclectic souls like Benji Kirkpatrick, Paul Sartin, Rachael McShane and Pete Flood beefing up the sound alongside an irresistibly vivacious horn section. The results are astonishing. Astonishing. By sheer energy, dynamic performance and a flurry of inventive arrangements, they blitz through five tracks - 25 minutes 30 seconds of them - with a bulldozing swagger that just leaves you breathless. "What the ferk was that? I'm breathless!" said the postman, who'd only popped in to give me a speeding fine.
I'd go further. I mean, I've had a drink (can't let that sherry go to waste) but this sounds to me like a landmark. There's so much going on in Rochdale Coconut Dance, what with counter melodies, alternative rhythms and clever allusions to the music of a thousand cultures, you haven't got time to dance to the thing. They similarly send the Playford tune Jack Robinson into orbit aboard a frenetic beat that suddenly, brilliantly, segues into a beautiful, yep beautiful, bagpipe break. It's clever, but it's instinctive clever, which means that it works on all levels of heads, hands and feet (though I'm not sure what you do with your hands).
      Yet riding above all this are the three vocal tracks. Boden seems to have acquired an extra gear since the Bellow album, and two of the tracks on that album, Copshawholme Fair and Prickle-eye Bush re-emerge as whooping, hollering monsters. The other, The Rambling Sailor - like Rochdale Coconut Dance - previously appeared on the first B&S album Through & Through, but that version is a shrinking violet compared with this tour de force.
      Like anybody who pushes the boat out in such cavalier fashion, Bellowhead will find plenty of critics and I can perfectly understand a mindset that rears up especially against Boden's marauding vocals, which are increasingly reminiscent of the stylisation of Peter Bellamy. But Bellowhead are taking the music forward with a flair and urgency rarely heard in these parts and I, for one, can't wait for them to make a proper album. “
COLIN IRWIN

STIRRINGS MAGAZINE

     “In my review of the last Spiers & Boden CD I wrote: “I have seen the future, and it bellows”. Well, the future’s just arrived. e.p.onymous is the debut recording by the ten-piece band that has coalesced around S & B over the past year. The note accompanying it said: “We’re not really looking to get any reviews for this”, but such self-effacement cuts no ice at Stirrings Central. It’s only a five-track 25-minute affair (hence the punsome title; of course you remember EPs...); nevertheless these five tracks represent a quantum jump for Eng Trad music, and it’s our job to tell you about it.
     How to describe Bellowhead? Imagine a parallel universe in which Brass Monkey joined forces with The Mothers Of Invention. That might give you some idea of the squeezy, brassy bedrock of the Bellowhead sound, and also hint at the bewildering Zappa-esque bricolage assembled on top of it. Eclectic is too pallid an adjective to describe this mighty babel of styles and idioms. No earnest multiculturalism here; rather it testifies to a shameless, maniacal glee at flinging everything within reach into the musical stewpot. So the Rochdale Coconut Dance (a title big Frank himself would have been proud of) opens with dark, industrial dissonances before breaking into a sort of New Orleans strut with Herb Alpert-style trumpet twiddles winding round the tune. Similarly, Copshawholme Fair kicks off in scratchy Café Gitane fashion but quickly summons to mind Wally Stott’s orchestrations for Scott Walker’s sorties into the Jaques Brel songbook. There’s a brass fanfare at the beginning of Prickle Eye Bush that comes straight from Billy Smart’s big top. Add to this a soupçon of Bollywood strings, thundering Bo Diddley drums, a blast of Blowzabella pipes... It’s a huge, heaving heterophony and sounds like nothing else on earth. And in the middle of it all, lest we forget, is the most dynamic, distinctive singer to emerge from the English scene since the Dransfields. Jon Boden is going for it harder than ever in unfeasibly high keys, hitting notes that will play havoc with bats’ navigation systems.
     Already the new generation of Eng Trad is split into those who are in Bellowhead and those who wish they were. I have a dream: a nationwide package tour featuring this bunch along with Whapweasel and Tiger Moth, and, say, Paul Weller to pull in the non-folkies. Such a bill would utterly transform the public perception of trad-based English folk music. We’d never again have to suffer the jibes about Arran pullovers and fingers in the ear. The future’s here—and it’s heading your way.”
RAYMOND GREENOAKEN