Music / Reviews
Review: Johnny Flynn & Robert MacFarlane, Bristol Beacon – ‘A noisy pilgrimage through nature’
Assumptions are funny things. You might assume that an evening with Johnny Flynn, actor and singer of The Detectorists theme, and Robert MacFarlane, acclaimed nature writer, would be all sun dappled, golden-hued gentleness. You might assume that there would be perfect crop circles and lazy dust motes.
At the end of their 90-minute prog-folk suite, full of evocations of Pan and huge monoliths of sound, Flynn grinned and said “You didn’t think it was gonna be like that, did you?!”
It all starts in a way that you might expect. Flynn stands, guitar in hand, bathed in a single spotlight, his throaty voice the very model of the modern folk singer. As The Ghost of O’Donahue unfolds around him the rest of his band join from the wings. There are eight in all.
Then a single drum. Thunderous. Insistent. Three female voices add harmony. One guitar becomes two. The simple sound of the folky troubadour is replaced by a pulsing, heaving monster, as huge and natural as the earth itself.
Almost unnoticed, MacFarlane appears on the side of the stage. As the first song finishes, he begins to speak of beginning a journey, a walk through an Uncanny Valley. His words are beautiful, poetic, full of imagery. His nature writing is brought to life.
As his words fade, the band create a huge folk churn: the voices spin and spiral, guitars, cello and drums whirling and eddying. Flynn is gravel and skree, jagged and rough.
Without pause, Song with No Name emerges through the fog, trailing ghosts. Flynn and his band conjure thick mist. The journey continues – MacFarlane leading us to the path, Flynn pushing us on until we get to the next stop. Past Tree Rings and to the Underland, to the Nether. It’s dark and heavy, a blast of 70’s folk-rock, a mystical surge.
Bonedigger has hints of Nick Cave at his most abandoned, as a flute and joyful shouts burnish sheets of beaten gold. A celebration sent up to the heavens for some kind of ancient gods.
MacFarlane’s weird walk continues, above ground, below ground, through forests and out into seas, his glorious verses green-tinged. I Can’t Swim There is a silvery whorl as thumps of a drum crash against Flynn’s rocky outcrop of a voice. Ferryman traces a shimmering sea-path through the lovely female harmonies, swerving huge percussive rumbles until a psych-sunrise can be spotted.
The World to Come is that sunrise: bright and the colour of a kingfisher, flashes of colour darting around. MacFarlane has a tambourine in his hand, Flynn thrashes away on his guitar and the folk journey comes to a blissful end. Belatedly the rest of the band are introduced as The River Band, and they provide a leaf-blown choir, a luxuriant mulch.
As an encore Flynn returned for Year Long Winter, from the latest album The Moon Also Rises, and Home and Dry, from 2021’s Lost in the Cedar Wood. Stripped of the prog stylings, these two were wonderful – simple and feelgood. They might have been much closer to what we expected but they formed just a part of an extraordinary, noisy pilgrimage through nature.
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