Ralfe Band - 'Swords' (Skint) Released 10/10/05

Folk music - just the thought of it makes many shudder, but don’t be put off by the Ralfe Band’s lovely debut album. While mandolins, accordions, cowbells and the likes are the staple diet of this skewed work, the affable foursome give the genre an elegantly wonky and kaleidoscopic twist. Better still with very off-kilter lyrics, almost primeval tales and even leanings towards the dark side, ‘Swords’ is a work with some substance.

The almost proggy (in a folk tinged kind of way, of course) piano dinking instrumental ‘Frascati Way Southbound’ kicks things off in mystical fashion, sounding a bit like the ‘Zoltar’ fairground music in the Tom Hanks film ‘Big’ at some points. Next, the carnival-esque ‘Women of Japan’ introduces Oly Ralfe’s fragile vocals to proceedings for the first time sounding very much like a younger model of Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch. Elsewhere, the album’s poppiest moment ‘1500 Years’ centres on the beguiling chorus of “Yodelay-ee-oh, yodelay-ee-oh, the engineer’s wife ran away with all my hard earned pay” and ‘Broken Teeth Song’ sounds like a ye olde worlde sailor’s sea shanty. Tres strange.

As the album progresses, yet more magical moments transpire. The spoken word ‘Bruno Mindhorn’ mixes in a touch of electronica with almost eerie choir noises, the out of tune yet strangely effecting ‘Albatross Waltz’ centres on nonsensical lyrics and talk of “the kings they are all dying”, and ‘March Of The Pams’ has an East European jig flavour to it. Only the bog standard folk ditty ‘Park Bench Blues’ and the mumbling ‘Arrow and Bow’ taint what is a great debut album.