FOR a moment you could see what the man from The Times was saying on Wednesday. Yes, this 11-piece folk big band doesn’t “allow much room for introspection or light and shade” and Jon Boden’s voice is “functional at best”.

All true but, oh, what a band. Yes, Boden’s voice isn’t what you could call strong, but it fits the music well and he is an entertaining showman, holding everything together in his pink jacket, pink tie and spangled shirt, arms flinging all over the place.

And the band is just tremendous, spirit-lifting, floor-kicking fun; great musicians one and all, they leap about like drunken folk demons while producing mostly up-tempo anthems with swaggering gusto. This is folk music loved and respected, while also given an energetic booting.

The showmanship was there from the start as a huge curtain fell to the stage when the band struck up. Many of the songs played were from the recent Revival album, which has also spawned the Bellowhead’s own real ale (available, Boden tells us, at the Maltings and Woolpack in York). Well hopped, you imagine, and lively.

The songs roll out: Roll Alabama, Fine Sally, Let Union Be, Moon Kittens – and Boden’s voice does strain on that one – Greenwood Side, Gosport Nancy; and older songs arrive too, including Betsy Baker, a wonderfully spirited take on New York Girls, and Roll The Woodpile Down (“We’d better play our hit”, says whichever band member introduced the song, in the band’s usual rotating roster).

This is music to make you dance and to lift your mood, and with respect to the man from The Times, there are light-and-shade moments, although in truth what most people came for was the roustabout stuff.