The Constant Pageant

Glasgow folk-rock four-piece Trembling Bells release their third slice of Caledonia dreaming, following on from the acclaimed Carbeth (2009) and Abandoned Love (2010). From its very first notes, The Constant Pageant flies the flag — a banner of arms — with a more confident, anthemic sound than ever before. Trembling Bells are twenty-first century troubadours who know their history, on a quest to connect with the core tradition of Song, and live deep within its mysteries. Medieval ballads, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are amongst the guiding lights in a music that embraces British folk-rock, American roots and electric psychedelia. The album title pays tribute to folkloric culture as ‘omnipresent in my thinking, and a source of personal joy and affirmation,’ says the Bells’ Alex Neilson. ‘A kind of florid, seething, creative wellspring that taints everything I do. Though, with this collection of songs, there were a number of other influences too. I think of traditional folk music as being like my first serious girlfriend, and all subsequent dalliances with other forms have been indelibly affected by it.’ It’s a record of windswept bitterness and joyous elation: Cold Heart Of Mine is a paean to embattled lovers written in the shadow of Verona’s ancient amphitheatre; Where Do I Go From You? and Torn Between Loves describe doomed romance, dramatized by Mike Hastings’s screaming fuzz guitar. There’s also a strong sense of place. Neilson’s native Yorkshire is the setting for Goathland — home of folk’s first family, the McCarthy-Watersons (not to mention the BBC’s Heartbeat) — and Otley Rock Oracle, in which a small Yorkshire market town is re-imagined as a place of dead roads, where severed golden heads and cauliflower-clouds clue in a young adept. Classical and Early Music come to the fore on Colour Of Night — in which a medieval feast seems to be taking place behind the song’s stately gavotte — and the melancholic closer, New Year’s