A self-styled “string quartet comprising a guitar, fiddle, mandolin and accordion” - welcome to the topsy–turvy world of Spiro. A world where nothing is quite what it seems. A world where up is down, black is white, and folk is, well, kind of avant-garde.
The four-piece band started off in Bristol in the early '90s as “The Famous Five”. Two of them were classically trained and the other two were raised in the hard-knock world of punk. So they decided to form a folk band. Except they wouldn’t play folk It was to be more folk mixed with classical, warapped in a contemporary coat. If Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman and Mike Oldfield had gone to an orgy in the '60s at the Cambridge Folk Festival, the resulting offspring might well be playing this music.
And defining this music is like trying to catch soap. On record it is a giddy, complex and frequently rather beautiful mixture of contemporary and traditional. Sometimes it sounds like ambient electronica played on acoustic instruments. Sometimes it is like listening to the soundtrack to a movie that you want to see. And always it sounds like more than four instruments playing, although there are no overdubs. This year’s Lightbox , on Peter Gabriel's label, is Spiro’s second album.They have claimed that this last offering was forged out of both a pop sensibility and a love of the weird. That makes it sound all rather haphazard; but it certainly isn’t.
Spiro encourage the folk tag, which although it comes largely from the tunes that drive or inform the pieces, also underscores their ethos. The lack of pretentiousness; the desire to connect. Maybe they should be playing chamber music venues. But last night they were in a word-of-mouth arts club, in a former squat in Dalston, playing in a room full of bric-a-brac that looked like one of Miss Haversham’s nightmares. Things started well with “Blue Bowl” and “Ghosts”, which drifted over the audience like a slightly sad memory. Next up, “Radio Sky” and “Pop” added rock into the mix. The instruments began beginning to sound like they were having a conversation. And fiddle player Jane Harbour, all auburn ringlets and flowing turquoise coat, looked like a gypsy possessed, with melodic lines bleeding into the musical tapestry.
However after about half an hour gremlins started to make a bid for the evening. Mics fell off, strings broke, and despite every effort to carry on blithely, it became clear that some of the audience, having already listened to a previous instrumental set, were suffering fatigue. As Spiro announced their last song, “Underland”, you could see resignation taking over. And then there was a bang, and no more sound from the accordion. Were the technical issues a shame? Maybe in a room that is masquerading as Blanche Dubois’s dressing room, to a crowd expecting something fringe, the rules are different. Certainly none of the audience, whose fatigue now seemed to have gone, seemed bothered.
And the band? Afterwards there were good natured shrugs to each other. I’m sure Spiro would feel as comfortable playing in a cider factory as Wigmore Hall. Its what makes their approach to slightly more challenging music so accessible. Sometimes “cross-over” and “avant-garde” can have little soul. Spiro, however, don’t just have the art, they have the heart. And last night they had not a little grit.
