Show Of Hands – Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed (Hands On Music)

I have been an atheist for as long as I can remember but certain events of late have made me consider giving it up. Richard Dawkins’ desperate tantrums do nothing to make me want to bang my non-God’s drum and Show Of Hands’ latest single Evolution actually makes me be ashamed to call myself an atheist.

The folk scene has inherited a set of political attitudes from the early 20th century left. It would be heresy to be a right-wing libertarian folk fan and it’s sure as hell not cool to say you believe in God. These attitudes aren’t about the music any more than my imminent conversion is anything to do with faith. Show Of Hands embody this sometimes sneery exclusion that puts a lot of music-lovers off folk.

I’m aware that Steve Knightley and Phil Beer are held in fairly high regard in the folk world and so they should be for their instrumentality and for Knightley’s songwriting talent. It’s just they also stand for everything I hate about middle-aged folk-punk bluster.

The album, Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed (again, grrrrr) is a selection of pompous anthems, Evolution being the worst offender. There’s nothing as infuriating having something patently obvious explained to you by a gravelly-voiced preacher in Hebden Bridge trousers. There is more preaching on the title track (“you’re on your yacht, we’re on our knees”) and The Worried Well (“why do these men in the wise old East keep powdering the horns of a rare old beast?”) and elsewhere. Lowlands, to be fair, the opening track, and a traditional shanty, is lovely with gentle harmonies. But their cover of Dylan’s Senor is ill-advised and mawkish. Covering Dylan is ill-advised at the best of times but covering little-covered Dylan songs suggests a supreme amount of (in my opinion) misplaced self-confidence. What emerges is a jaunty, well-heeled, rendition of what should be a desperate plea.

Knightley and Beer and are revered in the folk world for their Good Songs And Good Singing And That. But by covering Dylan here they are exposing their main, and maybe only, flaw. Put Jamie Oliver’s tasty and “perfectly nice” take on an Italian classic next to a rustic mamma’s masterpiece and you have pretty much the same effect.

Hazel Davis