Having seen him on several occasions with Bellowhead and sharing a stage with John Spiers, I was aware of what a brilliant and creative musician Jon Boden is, both in playing and especially writing. It is for this reason I had high expectations when going to see Jon Boden and the Remnant Kings - having started as his solo venture, this should be a show of Boden’s creativity at its very best.
Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Opening the show rather unexpectedly with the quiet and beautiful ’Dancing in the Factory’ after possibly a slightly excessive amount of wax cylinder music before the gig began, followed seamlessly by the comparatively dark ’Going Down to the Wasteland’, I could already tell it was set to be an impressive and inspiring night for me as a musician.
I have always loved Jon Boden’s guitar playing and use of unusual tunings, but despite this it seemed that the times Jon really came alive were when he was playing the melodeon or the fiddle - it would have been nice to see more of these, as each instrument only made an appearance once each. Incidentally, ’When the Walls Come Tumbling Down’ in which the violin made its appearance was definitely the highlight of the night for me. The song was impressive enough on CD, but experiencing the massive-sounding instrumental section at the end live, with the entire band really letting rip, completely blew me away.
The Remnant Kings were also superb as a band - a very tight knit sound, functioning well as one unit. Like many reviewers before me, I was wowed at Sam Sweeney’s simultaneous fiddling and drumming. Not only that, but I found his drumming style in itself very creative, steering well clear of your bog standard 8-beat rock type beats that seem to be the limit of many drummers’ skill (although it would be difficult to use that anyway with Jon’s creative use of time signature changes!) in favour of beats not dissimilar to Bellowhead’s Pete Flood’s style, utilising the entire kit.
The set was regularly punctuated with traditional songs between Jon’s own compositions. While this added some variety to the gig, I did find myself enjoying those songs less than the others, eagerly awaiting another of Jon’s own songs, because those were really what I was there to hear. However there were some fantastic moments in the traditional, such as the concertina trio of Jon Boden, Rob Habron and Sam Sweeney.
Overall an incredible display of musicianship from the whole band - every one of them changing instruments regularly to give a unique sound that I could possibly go so far as describing as futuristic folk. I left the Southbank Centre that night feeling inspired to create music with no boundaries, getting everything possible out of every piece; as I had just experienced, that how music was truly meant to be.
