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Review: Sam Sweeney, Downend Folk & Roots – ‘Glides, skips, skims like stones’
Things are starting to get better, aren’t they? The snowdrops are peeking through the soil, birds are singing their hearts out, there’s a tiny bit of warmth in the sunshine, there’s actually some sunshine! You can feel that everything is going to be alright.
If there’s one man you need to soundtrack those bursts of spring-y joy then it is, of course, Sam Sweeney.
One of the finest fiddle players of his generation, member of Bellowhead, Leveret and countless wonderful collaborations and, most recently, part of Boss Morris; Sweeney sometimes looks as though he can’t believe how beautiful the music he makes can be.
is needed now More than ever
Almost doesn’t believe the beauty of his own music – Sweeney is arguably the finest folk fiddler of his generation
Starting, as he always does, with Orange in Bloom, a Morris tune which Sweeney describes as “the best tune of all time”, it is full of woodsmoke and loveliness.
Gently, slowly he coaxes spirits from the forest as Louis Campbell shaves slivers of moonlight with his guitar. It takes about thirty seconds before Sweeney smiles, tilts his head back and simply allows the music to flow from him.
The whole of the first set is taken up with the Shapes EP, which Sweeney and Campbell released in 2023. They play it sequentially and, quite simply, every tune is glorious.
On Shape #1 (D) the fiddle flutters above the tune, Campbell’s guitar ringing out like a piano, until everything soars. These two seem to be in constant motion, there’s fluidity, the music glides and skips, it skims like stones.
Shape #3 (E) stretches and unfurls, the guitar as soft as raindrops, while Shape #4 (G) patters like go-to-bed footsteps, a lullaby for the ages.
Shape #5 (A) flits through the trees, Sweeney’s fiddle humming snatches of romance, the soundtrack to a long-forgotten love. It’s cinematic in the best possible way, projecting super 8 images straight into your memory box.
Sweeney admits to falling asleep to this EP and it is easy to see why. All of the Shapes are blissful, tranquil, and gorgeous.
Glorious tunes followed by joyful toe-tapping numbers – Sweeney and Campbell have got all bases covered
For the second set, Sweeney and Campbell break out the toe-tappers. Steppy Downs Road is huge fun, Campbell propulsive while Sweeney swoops up and over hills. Want to Fly, Want to Flee is another that explodes skywards.
Both instruments launching themselves into the air, this is music for a summer’s day, music of sunshine and heart-bursting happiness.
There are light-footed hornpipes and haunting regimental marches, there’s dance music for campfire embers and repeated shivers of delight. Sweeney and Campbell shimmer and pulse, sometimes they seem to be desperately trying to hold onto the streamers of light that they produce before they just fly away.
Sam Sweeney lets his fiddle do his singing for him; but Lou Shepherd, in support, is all about the voice. This Bristol based singer-songwriter is seriously good.
With only a handful of shows under her belt, she holds echoes of Sandy Denny and Nick Drake. Her voice is so poised, so pure.
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If she encapsulates the best of 60s folk on an unaccompanied Quiet Joys of Brotherhood, then she is beautifully contemporary on West Winds. In the same way that Katherine Priddy can still a room with her voice, Shepherd has a packed Christ Church entranced.
Her own songs are sprinkled with nostalgic magic dust, they are paeans to nature, to longing, to resilience. Mackerel Skies and Rise are flecked with sunshine, skating on acoustic hope. Rambling ‘til Sunrise has the lazy roll of an Amsterdam bicycle wheel and allows us to glimpse a European summer evening.
Between them, Lou Shepherd, Sam Sweeney and Louis Campbell help to dispel the wintery gloom, to look forward to brighter days. To remind us that, soon, everything will be alright.
All images: Barry Savell
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