Morcheeba top a folk free opening day at Moseley Folk Festival

It's three 'o' clock on Friday afternoon and I think I'm late. There's a blonde, shiny acoustic guitar on the lap of a blond not-so-shiny man on the humble, but decorative stage at the bottom of the natural amphitheatre that is Moseley park. Emanating from the stage was some very uninspiring music.

Uninteresting guitar witch underlined what would be a pleasant voice if it weren't spouting awful metaphors. "satellite stares into the night... Gathering information" is just one example. I was relieved, then, when I realised this was just the sound check and I sat down to wait for the real music to begin. The same man came on the stage - Mickey Greaney. A 'What am I doing here?' shot urgently through my head. Was there going to be a whole day of this kind of amateurish white-male-with-acoustic-guitar set up before the good names came up? Turns out, fortunately, that wasn't the case.



The day started to pick up with Michael Weston King taking the stage. With this man's track record I was expecting great things from his live show; and he delivered. To some extent. You could hear the years of experience through his music but like many veterans of a given genre you can also hear a great sameness to it. A formula. A formula they've found through years of hard work no doubt and it's not a bad thing. Just not exceptional either. The highlight of the set was a moving cover of Phil Och's 'No More Songs'.

What came next seemed directly in answer to the question above – "What am I doing here?"- I mean, why, when you have huge festivals like Glastonbury boasting huge names in huge fields (albeit with huge prices) would you make the effort to go to a small boutique festival with unheard-ofs and nearly-famouses? The Saffron Sect lazily twang in answer to this. A psychedelic mishmash who, just when you thought you were hearing a little of The Beatles in them, would float into a song that clearly belongs in the fourteenth century. Playing guitars, sitars, schmitars - lots of stringy things that I don't know the name of – they were the perfect accompaniment to the afternoon sun. Well, I wouldn't say sun; more a lack of rain. Nevertheless The Saffron Sect went down a treat and filled me with gleeful anticipation of what other gems, unbeknown to me, lay ahead.

A pleasant interlude by The Travelling Band brought forth Bristol's own Babel, who despite the connotations of the name, have a well established rock n roll smash-a-tambourine-against-your-thigh sound that brought some welcome allegro to the day.

The run up to the days headliner was generally impressive. The Miserable Rich play what would sound like pop songs, pleasant enough on their own, but given a new dimension by being played with a quintet. The Accidental brought a much slower, darker sound to the day. 'Birthday', itself introduced as a dark song was atmospheric and gave a nervous edge to the anticipation for the nights denouement.



For Morcheeba the atmosphere changed dramatically. People were scared off their grass stained behinds either by the thought of not seeing the band well enough or by the prospect of hearing them without being able to dance. With everyone under the gazebo at the front and the dark quickly descending the feeling of being at a picnic was quickly fading and being replaced with the purity of an indoor gig.

They opened with the much loved 'The Sea' from their 1998 'Big Calm' album. Singing for them was the French beauty Manda, who features on two of the tracks on their new record 'Dive Deep'. One of which is the mournful 'Gained the World' which came across great live, her almost whispering but rich voice complementing the bass lead melody to great effect. Some songs, though, suffered purely because they were not written for her voice, beautiful though it is it did not quite have the thickness of Judie Tzuke that makes 'Enjoy the Ride' such a powerful track.

The ending was very positive, the band giving up their moody nuances for the almost gospel-esque tunes like 'Part of the Process', finishing on the anthem 'Rome Wasn't Built in a Day' which had the the crowd all the way to the back dancing around and clapping their hands with joy.

Probably the weakest of the three days this Friday suffered quite a bit due to the fact that many people who would have otherwise been here were obviously at work. Saying that though, the line-up probably didn't appeal to your average Mosley Folk Festival goer because there quite literally wasn't anything that could be described explicitly as folk.

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