A foghorn cuts through the stage mist, heralding a night that’s half alt-folk party, half nature reserve. The trills, squawks and chirrups of red grouse, loons and skylarks flock around pastoral pop songs: a marsh’s love song to the ocean (Between the Saltmarsh and the Sea), a hiking metaphor for life’s regrets (The Road You Didn’t Take) or a tramp through American woodland (Farewell Appalachia). So evocative of the natural world is the tour to celebrate Bonxie – the acclaimed third album from Oxford folk wonders Stornoway – that it should have Chris Packham on the sound desk.
It’s heartening that Stornoway are finally being hailed as the UK’s finest modern folk act on the back of indulging the rural obsessions of frontman Brian Briggs, a lesser-spotted example of the Awkwardus Popgenius species. Birder, one-time duck academic and enemy of humanity-imprisoning modern tech (“My printer is the one thing I’ve ever punched,” says the man least likely ever to chat up Cortana), his songs knit music and nature seamlessly. Strings wail like forlorn seabirds, On the Rocks rises like an Arctic sea squall echoing with whalesong, and the mariachi ode to growing old gregariously, Lost Youth, is built around squelches of electronica that resemble manic duck calls.
Breathtaking moments abound. Their staggering four-part harmonies stun the room into such silence during unplugged shanty Josephine that you curse the air-conditioning hum. A deeply touching Fuel Up, dedicated to Keith Harris and Orville, induces genuine tears and shivers. Briggs’s comically awkward between-song recounting of bizarre news stories – tonight we’re told of a man who accidentally shot his mother-in-law when his bullet ricocheted off an armadillo, with accompanying armadillo facts – offsets the profundity of his lyrics. It all ends in jubilant fashion, with Zorbing’s blaring trumpet fanfares, Yazz’s The Only Way Is Up performed as a country campfire lament, and the crowd clicking and clapping through Love Song of the Beta Male, a rousing wimp-power anthem. Proud outsiders, proudly outside.
