The best record you’ve never heard: Goblin Band recommend a slice of arcane English folk

Posted On November 21, 2025November 21, 2025

It’s all too easy to forget that the centuries-old folk tradition was a populist art form sung by the labouring class, far removed from the stuffy establishment hijack that wrings out all its stomping life, or operating in spaces remote and inaccessibly to the enthused but unmoneyed.

Folk’s bawdy universality and collective cheer is a principle well understood by London’s Goblin Band. A trad four-piece connected to the arcane without ever lapsing into novelty act, Goblin Band remind exactly that, once upon a time, when much of the Roud Folk Song Index was gifted to the eternal heritage, such ditties and ballads were reflecting the times there and then. So do Goblin Band, penning numbers that speak to the political tumult internationally and at home from their queer lens.

The impromptu energy that folk bottles when done right guides the logical direction for Goblin Band’s debut album, A Loaf of Wax, a live recording of their October 14th, 2024, show in Hackney’s Moth Club. Such a document captures the joyous charge they’re able to conjure, the interim exchanges with the crowd sparking with character like tracks themselves, and the audience participation lending an additional instrument of transportive crackle. When society feels ever more frayed and atomised, such communal experience feels all the more priceless.

Wrenching folk away from the tedious clutches of corporate dilution and aloof academia, Goblin Band look set to stand as one of the most electric forces to hit the traditional music underground in a long time. To glean a little further light on the band’s influences, we asked vocalist and reeds, recorder, and hurdy-gurdy player Rowan Gatherer as to their pick of the best record you’ve never heard.

Rowan Gatherer of Goblin Band on Won’t You Go My Way?

Rowan Gatherer: “Won’t You Go My Way? was recorded June 22nd, 1971, at Folk Studio in Norwich, forming a quite difficult to find strain of Peter Bellamy’s rich and varied solo work singing traditional English music. Due to a quirk of the mysterious forces of legal music rights, many of Bellamy’s albums under the Argo record label are unavailable for easy purchase or streaming.

“So it was that I stumbled on some of these recordings uploaded in full to YouTube (presumably by fans) and found Won’t You Go My Way? to be one of the most compelling champions of traditional folk music in the live album format that I’ve ever heard.

“Folk music is, after all, a living, organic, mutating phenomena, it was not designed to be presented as a physical product or an art piece, and so it often fits awkwardly into the studio album form. The raw power, charm and atmosphere of field recordings are a testament to the essential eternal draw of folk music in a way that is very difficult to contrive for a studio album, but is closer at hand in a live recording.

“Some of this essential magic is captured here in exceptional form not only in the stalwart mesmerising quality of Peter Bellamy and Louisa Killen’s performances, but in the warm sound of the audience joining the chorus, and the words spoken between songs which offer a spellbinding glimpse of a moment lost to time forever, which is ultimately something that traditional music does best of all.”

Few could claim to harbour such love and affection for the English folk heritage as Peter Bellamy. Forming The Young Tradition during the folk revivalism of the mid-1960s, the trio would find acclaim before Bellamy’s intuitions guided him to unadulterated, earthier realms of folk at its most authentic, far removed from the rock and pop realm that much of the scene would orbit.

Across the years, Bellamy would cut independent records that would find limited release, but often handed out as home-taped efforts at his live gigs. Finding some praise with his The Transports ballad-opera, Bellamy would continue championing folk despite the changing musical climate.

According to friends and family, Bellamy struggled to accept his waning career and the peak of the folk revival having long gone. Despite keeping fairly busy with projects under Fellside Records, Bellamy was found dead by suicide in September 1991, a shock to the folk community.

Such a purity and infectious humour that Bellamy flexes on his live recordings, clearly points a certain road for Gatherer and Goblin Band, eagerly wresting the folk tradition back to its roots and reimagining the musical lore as a creative medium designed to be enjoyed and speak to everybody.

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