Not so long ago an unreconstructed folkie such as Johnny Flynn would have been laughed out of band practice. But with fellow Brit-scene moppets such as Lightspeed Champion parlaying an ear for sub-Wickerman ditties and Ye Olde English phrasing into upward career mobility, this Anglo-Irish "troubadour" – his word, not ours – has fetched up at the perfect moment.
To be clear, Flynn isn’t a dyed-in-the-mohair revivalist . He’s never waded through sheep-dip and horse manure en route to a fiddle orgy at his Cotswalds local; hand him a bodhran and he’d probably sit on it or try to wear it as a hat. Flynn is, in fact a faux-folkie, a sometime actor (he’s had stints in the West End and is, by all accounts, good mates with Kevin Spacey) sinking his teeth into a particularly juicy role: that of footloose songwriter drawing upon early 20th century America blues and fresh-from-the-farm English traditional music. It’s a part he was born to play – cycling through sweetly ebullient campfire belters such as ‘Tickle Me Pink’ and the closing hours melancholy of (yes) ‘Wayne Rooney’, he’s forged a sound that is one part ‘Memory Of A Free Festival’-era Bowie, one part Waterboys. There’s a third element, Flynn’s sweet, brittle voice – which, though sometimes in danger of floundering beneath the miasma of campfire jauntiness, such as on the gospel-tinged ‘Brown Trout Blues’, is all the more affecting for its lack of brashnesss. A Larum is a very good record indeed.
Key Track: ‘Tickle Me pink’