Trembling Bells – The Constant Pageant – Honest Jon's Records – HJRCDDJ55 - *****

When folkies like Fairport Convention or Trees rocked out in the early Seventies, they assimilated then contemporary sounds. Attempts to ape them today, as in swathes of the Philadelphia psych-folk underground, can whiff of costumed re-enactment.
Praise John Barleycorn, then, for Trembling Bells, whose third album is both stoically historic and heroically now.
Confidently proclaiming themselves a feature of the titular Constant Pageant, assuming a role in an ongoing tradition, Trembling Bells hit new levels of excellence. A sudden sense of purpose sees their most pronounced avant-rock leanings and ragged improvisatory edges selflessly shorn, sensing some vast utilitarian undertaking almost within their grasp. Michael Hastings' Tardis guitar tumbles through time, snatching the notes it needs from incompatible eras; Simon Shaw's bass charts a pole star path through Alex Neilson's tempestuous free jazz percussion; processionary horns toot; and Lavinia Blackwall can make skyward shifts into a head voice that would wither an X-Factor finalist, on the nosebleed inducingly brilliant Where Do I Go From You, and replicate woozy abandon, on the majestic lurch of the declaratory, tumultuous opener Just As The Rainbow.

The group do cast their net wider than British folk. The pounding punk-prog number Otley Rock Oracle, channelling Mountain's Nantucket Sleighride, belongs by virtue of its hallucinatory folkloric narrative. Cold Heart Of Mine's blues harp connects Americana with its European roots and Hastings' raga like licks look East. In the 21st century nothing can exist in splendid isolation.
The Constant Pageant offers a poetic incantation of British identity far brighter than Michael Gove's proposed GCSE history syllabus.

(20/3/11)