The last time BBC Folk Singer of 2010 John Boden and his Remnant Kings played in Oxford was at the Jericho Tavern shortly after the release of his second solo album, ‘Songs From The Floodplain’. The album is a collection of songs set in a post-apocalyptic future England where oil has run out, casual use of electricity is a thing of the past and people have to make their own entertainment like they did in old days – which Boden describes as “probably a good thing” – though frankly it sounds like it would be worth using all the petrol and casual electricity you can to get away from such a cringeable premise. The album didn’t grab attention on a first listen and the Jericho Tavern show was plagued with technical issues which put the band on edge from the start and it never quite gelled, so that, it seemed, was that.
 
In a less bustling setting, however, things are unsurprisingly very different. The Nettlebed Village Club is a pre-war wood-panelled hall in the heart of Tory country where the framed poster for the Coronation Ball has probably been unmoved for the last three coronations, and the audience at the folk club which meets there every Monday probably couldn’t be further in age and lifestyle from the typical crowd at the Jericho while remaining in the same county. Boden has been praised for pushing boundaries with his solo work, which some in the folk community have endearingly described as ‘electronic’, and while he’s certainly not conservative within that context. his band is much more at home in a folk club than an indie venue. Yes, there is electricity in the electric guitar – and perhaps in the original Edison wax cylinder phonograph recordings which punctuate the set – but otherwise the Remnant Kings are a resolutely acoustic affair, a four-piece backing band of prodigiously versatile musicians who play guitars, mandolin, concertinas, double bass and, impressively, drums and violin simultaneously.
 
It’s easy to believe that the post-technological England Boden describes would be popular with this crowd, and the traditional songs and Kipling verses that Boden sings alongside the original material evoke a very traditional idea of England, working the land and drinking ale, in which dealing with immigration means fighting King William and urban crime is restricted to petty thieving between neighbours who never lock their doors. It’s a curious kind of future-nostalgia which would fall flat if it weren’t for Boden’s skill both as a songwriter and performer; his strong yet trembling tenor voice rings clear over his percussive Nic Jones-style guitar playing, his effortless melodeon and concertina work and his energetic flowing fiddle. The first set mines the Floodplain album heavily, and in such a relaxed setting songs like Beating The Bounds and Days Gone By – a song whose rolling off-kilter 7-time rhythm complements the image of the story’s protagonist lying on a motorway – really begin to shine. The lyrical tone of songs like Has-Been Cavalry and Don’t Wake Me Up ‘Til Tomorrow is undeniably bleak but the songs are never depressing and his metaphors and choruses follow more in the tradition of melancholy Tom Waits than traditional Martin Carthy.
 
An interval comes, giving time to buy drinks, CDs and raffle tickets, and the compère for the night takes the stage to sing a couple of traditional songs of his own before inviting the band back for a second set which casts the net wider in the Boden catalogue. Songs from his first album ‘Painted Lady’ come out, and a fuller sound is given to some from the excellent Spiers & Boden ‘Songs’ album, intercut with more traditional songs and wax-cylinder recordings. The band are relaxed and confident on this their only tour of the year – like most folk backing bands they’re a supergroup within which each multi-instrumentalist member has their own busy schedule (the fiddle-playing drummer, for example, is Sam Sweeney, the English pipe player in Boden’s folk big-band Bellowhead). The arrangements are considered and appropriate and the backing band is modest and coherent; there’s no showy instrument-swapping for the sake of it.  Spiers and Boden’s Doleful Dance of Death needs to be backed with double-bass and wine glasses, for example, just as the cover of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love needs to be played by a concertina trio. The PA is turned off for an entirely acoustic closing song, the band takes a bow and the audience put the chairs away in a well-practiced motion, readying the hall for the next night’s darts league. Boden isn’t so much bringing folk music into the present as skipping the present entirely, and his attempt to look straight over us from the future to the past, while conceptually very risky, does largely pay off. At least it does when performed in a village which gives a good impression of wishing the present would be done and bugger off.