Parlour Ballads

Parlour ballads, as a genre, get poor press as low-grade, middle-class Victoriana, but here’s Jon Boden at the piano (and sometimes at the fiddle and guitar, but never the sherry) with Remnant Kings including Sam Sweeney, Ben Nicholls, Rob Harbron, Sally Hawkins and MG Boulter – the set is dedicated to the much-loved Paul Sartin, who died before the album’s recording sessions. Boden’s mission is to pluck out the gems from the genre’s dross. Opener ‘One April Morning’ shows how parlour song and folk ballad intertwine, like the briar and the rose, while John Clare’s ‘Clock o’ Clay’ is a beauty, with vigour and a cor anglais in its emotive evocation of nature. Boden’s parlour piano is exchanged for a guitar on Cyril Tawney’s ‘Oggie Man’, while ‘Danny Deever’ combines words by Kipling and a tune from Peter Bellamy, a major inspiration for Boden, and all to brilliant effect.