The trio on stage

Show of Hands made the most of fine new venue The Apex at Bury St Edmunds. Graham Uney went along to see them

Shrewsbury Folk Festival, 2011. Amid an oversized list of brilliant newly discovered acts, one performer in particular stood head and shoulders above the rest. A middle-aged New Yorker, now living in Argentina, called Richard Shindell. He has that magical way of telling a story about ordinary folk, set to beautiful guitar percussion, and sung in a wonderfully distinctive, soft yet strong voice. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw that Richard was due to play the Apex in Bury and better still, he just happened to be on tour with possibly one of the best folk bands of all time – Phil Beer and Steve Knightley’s Show of Hands.

The gig on Friday was superb. Richard treated us to an all-too-short array of some of his own songs, such as ‘Are You Happy Now?’, ‘There Goes Mavis’, and ‘Fenario’, and if I have any complaint against Mr Shindell it’s that his cheese-ometer clearly has never worked throughout his entire songwriting career. A good half of his songs are hauntingly beautiful, taking you right to the very heart of the circumstances surrounding their crafting, but then he throws you completely with some sentimental US-of-A claptrap about a quaint house with a white picket fence and a crumb-cake waiting on the table – you get the idea. Some of his songs are as wonderful as any I know, and some just make me need the vomit bucket pronto.

Show of Hands themselves captivated as they always do. They took us through a broad array of songs, both classic and little-known album tracks. ‘Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed’ – the title track from their last album - quickly became a live favourite, in the same way as ‘Country Life’ did for them a few years ago, while new songs ‘Now you Know’ and ‘Stop Copying Me’ have done likewise. Nice to hear some slightly more obscure tracks too, such as ‘Be Happy’ from the Country Life album.

One interesting but odd aspect of the show came as my wife and I were on the way home after the gig. I mentioned that I thought the tempo of the whole gig was a little slower than usual, with some of the more familiarly stompy numbers being delivered at more of a shuffle, whereas my wife thought the exact opposite, and that they seemed to be making more of a noise than when we’d ever seen them before. Strange how we both had very different experiences of the same show! Either way, and however you view this point, it really was a great and memorable performance.

Possibly the highlight was when Richard Shindell came back on during the main set to run through, with Show of Hands, his own fabulous post apocolyptic offering ‘You Stay Here’ (even if Steve Knightley did make a bit of a hash of the lyrics!).

As for a lowpoint, well, I’ve said this in a few reviews now, and it’s obvious that Steve and Phil are ignoring me, so I’ll say it again. Why, with such a rich back-catalogue of their own songs at hand, do Show of Hands feel the need to do an awful rendition of an already awful song, Don Henley’s ‘Boys of Summer’? Please lads, lets have more of your own songs next time round – they’re all a much better bet than that. ‘Country Life’, ‘Cold Frontier’, or ‘Man in Green’ could easily have filled the time taken by that woebegone load of twaddle. My wife’s even threatened to stop coming to your gigs if you insist on torturing us time after time! Ah, now there’s another song you should stop inflicting on your audience. At least you spared us that one at the Apex...

Show of Hands are currently on tour around the UK. Visit showofhands.co.uk