''Broadside'' is the fourth full album by

Bellowhead Bellowhead is an English contemporary folk band, active from 2004 to 2016, reforming in 2020. The eleven-piece act played traditional dance tunes, folk songs and shanties, with arrangements drawing inspiration from a wide range of musical sty ...

, released on 15 October 2012. The album was recorded over several weeks at Rockfield Studios in March 2012. Initially around 25 tracks were arranged for the album, of these 14 tracks were recorded (all of which became commercially available). Like their previous album, ''

Hedonism Hedonism is a family of Philosophy, philosophical views that prioritize pleasure. Psychological hedonism is the theory that all human behavior is Motivation, motivated by the desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. As a form of Psycholo ...

'', it was produced by John Leckie. All of the tracks, bar one, on ''Broadside'' are traditional

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

s, many being written several hundred years ago; they have all been given a new arrangement by the band. The album title refers both to the nautical meaning of firepower and to

broadside ballad A broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between the ...

s, an early form of printed song.Bellowhead Broadside approved PR 2012-2
/ref> The album entered the UK official album charts at number 16, unprecedented for an independently released folk album. It also went to number 1 in the UK independent album charts.

Singles

The track, " 10,000 Miles Away", was released as the lead single in late September and was

playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. ...

ed on

BBC Radio 2 BBC Radio 2 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It is the List of most-listened-to radio programs, most popular station in the United Kingdom with over 14 million weekly listeners. Since launching in 1967, the sta ...

for several weeks in October. In January, the album's second single "Roll the Woodpile Down" (Radio Edit), was also

ed on the 'A list' for

, receiving significant airplay. This radio edit was mixed by Pete Craigie (

Pet Shop Boys Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and were listed as the most successful duo in UK music h ...

Track listing

Bonus tracks Both bonus tracks appear on the

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

'bonus track edition'. "Wind & Rain" also appears on the single ''10,000 Miles Away''.

Personnel

* Jon Boden – lead vocals,

fiddle A fiddle is a Bow (music), bowed String instrument, string musical instrument, most often a violin or a bass. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including European classical music, classical music. Althou ...

*Benji Kirkpatrick – guitars,

bouzouki The bouzouki (, also ; ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', , from Greek , from Turkish ) is a musical instrument popular in West Asia (Syria, Iraq), Europe and Balkans (Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey). It is a member of the long-necked lute fam ...

mandolin A mandolin (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled St ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

, vocals * John Spiers – melodeon, Anglo-concertina, Claviola, vocals *Andy Mellon – trumpet, vocals * Justin Thurgur – trombone, vocals *Brendan Kelly – saxophone,

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common Soprano clarinet, soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays no ...

, vocals *Ed Neuhauser – Helicon, Tuba, vocals *Pete Flood – percussion, vocals *Rachael McShane – cello,

, vocals *Paul Sartin –

, oboe, vocals *

Sam Sweeney Sam Sweeney (born 27 February 1989 in Nottingham) is a multi-instrumental English folk musician. Career Sweeney was introduced to folk music as a child via his parents' record collection and taught himself to play traditional pieces by ear. ...

–

, English bagpipes, vocals

References

{{Authority control Bellowhead albums 2012 albums Albums recorded at Rockfield Studios