Marc Riley - 16/02/2010

Cast your mind back to snowy Britain when we had to cancel some of our bands ... well tonight, eventually, we have that live session from Woodenbox and a Fistfull of Fivers. Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers are a folk-rock-soul sextet of pan-Scottish provenance. Singer and guitarist Ali Downer assumed the moniker 'Woodenbox' , in a nod to influences such as King Creosote and 'Bonnie' Prince Billy and the addition of The Fistful of Fivers reflects a collective appreciation of Ennio Morricone's scores for the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. The band's debut album, set to be released on Electric Honey (Belle and Sebastian, Snow Patrol, Biffy Clyro) in April 2010 is entitled 'Home and the Wildhunt', a reference to the Germano-Celtic legend of 'The Wild Hunt'. A phantasmal group of huntsmen, often led by the god Wodan, would appear in the sky replete with horses and hounds. The hunters may have been dead souls or faeries and the hunt was thought to presage catastrophe. In the Peterborough Chronicle of 1132, an anonymous monk testifies to the appearance of the hunt: "Then soon afterwards many people saw and heard many hunters hunting. The hunters were big and black and terrible, and their hounds were all black and wide-eyed and loathsome, and they rode on black horses and black goats". All that plus we've Roberto "slap my thighs and ding my warbles" Hughes with his pick of this week's twisted Americana Folk Music.