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Review: Belinda O’Hooley, Downend Folk & Roots – ‘Clarity, honesty and heart-stopping freedom’
Is Belinda O’Hooley Reform’s worst nightmare? Is she the anti-Farage?
She is, after all, everything that the cut-price Mosley is not: she has integrity and honesty, has passion and Pride (with a capital P), she’s thoughtful and intelligent, full of compassion and love and she is, above all else, wonderfully, gloriously brilliant.
If Belinda O’Hooley ever ran for Prime Minister, I would vote for her.
Now performing as a solo act, O’Hooley’s show is even more magical
She’s been to Downend before, of course, as O’Hooley and Tidow with her partner, Heidi.
Now she is solo, just her and (for the most part) a piano. Oddly, by taking something away, O’Hooley has added something magical. She has become an assured voice, someone who presents something small in the palm of her hand and just says “look, here’s the whole world”. It’s the same thing that Kate Bush does, that Suzanne Vega does.
Except that O’Hooley can make you cry while you gape in wonder at the story she tells you.
Matthew and Ted is about a man and his dog and it hides, she says, “something big in something small”. It is the most beautiful, most tender, most heartbreaking thing you’ll hear. Her voice is comfort-calm, just telling of a walk, of friends, of love but in it there are multitudes.
Threaded around graceful piano notes there’s the simple thought – “I ask what love is”. It’s a question that I suspect the likes of Farage have never asked in their lives.
On Hawkward, taken from her debut solo album Inversions, her piano rolls and tumbles like children chasing each other down a grassy bank.
Until she sings “I am soaring” and everything is laid out in front of you, with clarity and honesty and a heart-stopping freedom. It’s the sort of song you want to tuck into your breast pocket and keep close to your heart.
O’Hooley ties much of this evening around her family. She introduces The Swallow’s Tail as one of her dad’s favourite reels, her piano hums and thrums through the space, it pecks and thumps creating a swell of catharsis.
She admits to “buggering about” with the tune, but it’s a glorious inversion, not a destruction. Skibbereen, too, is a nod to her dad; it’s an old Irish tune which has a filmic waltz at O’Hooley’s fingertips.
Most piano-driven, O’Hooley also adds in some accordion based cabaret to the set
If there’s one thing for sure, it’s that she knows her audience. She asks “so, did anyone vote Reform?” as if that were the most ridiculous concept imaginable and, for those around her, it is unthinkable.
She then launches into Chinese Whispers, a song about fear mongering and the spreading of hate. She worries about the removal of Pride flags and gives the whole thing a flash of accordion-driven Berlin cabaret.
History tells us, of course, that some people didn’t like accordion-driven cabaret songs. Downend loved it.
By the end Belinda O’Hooley revels in the love that Gentleman Jack and The Ballad of Anne and Ann engender. There’s dancing and whooping and, eventually, a standing ovation that is richly deserved.
If all of this wasn’t enough, the evening starts with incredible singer-songwriter Gren Bartley. He’s been here before, too, but that was twelve years ago. Back then his songs were wonderful, his voice a lovely John Martyn-esque hum. Nothing’s changed, he’s still fantastic.
Hold the Line buzzes with a Shruti box and lyrical guitar lines, it is slow and gentle until it just floats into the June night, humming to itself.
There’s a brain-snagging chorus in Perfectly Crazy, a thrilling high wire act with an acoustic guitar as a safety net. It’s yet another song this evening that shows you the details so that you understand the big stuff. Oh, it’s so good.
The Thief and I does that brilliant thing of feeling like an old folk song but sounding like a new one. The guitar cascades around some classic storytelling. He might have been away for a while but it’s great to have Gren Bartley back again.
In these turbulent times, there’s really only one thing to do – vote O’Hooley because, after all, things can only get better.
All images: Barry Savell
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