Julian Gaskell and His Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: A Shandy Ballad

First published in the February-March 2024 edition of Folk London Magazine

This is an album you pick up for the outrageous band name, discover quickly it isn’t what you

expected (what did you expect, exactly?), make to turn it off, and then realize you actually do

like it - or, at least, there’s no real harm in letting it play, right? That is, until suddenly you’ve

somehow listened to it a dozen times and wake up with Julian Gaskell’s rasp bouncing around

your skull at 3am and can’t really bring yourself to be upset about it.

A Shandy Ballad is self-produced and it feels like it, but I really can’t stress enough how much I

mean that in a good way. Gaskell rants over guitar, accordion, piano, banjo, and percussion

(supported also by Thomas Sharpe’s bass and Cally Gibson’s violin and viola). He rants fast, he

rants slow, he rages and pleads, and his unmistakable voice lends itself equally well to it all

(while we’re on it, Gaskell has a voice that is just great to listen to. It’s interesting and full of

character and scratches my brain in exactly the right way. It’s everything you’d hope for in a

project like this and I could (and have) listen(ed) to it all day).

A few highlights: A bluesy and delicious “Johnny Sands” which “attempts to stand on the

shoulders of” the versions by Martin Carthy and Jon Wilks “but somehow falls off” (Gaskell’s

own words); an updated “Rigs of the Times” which accomplishes the requisite fist-shaking at

landlords while taking a nice modern swipe at Airbnb, Exxon, and the Daily Mail; and “On the

Corner of a Photograph,” one of the more sentimental of Gaskell’s originals (and maybe my

personal favorite). Honorable mention, too, to “We Couldn’t Make This Shit Up If We Tried,” a

scathing, accordion-driven tirade about post-Brexit Britain that builds manically from start to end

and gives way so seamlessly to the 19th century broadside “The Durham Pant-Wife's Petition”

as to make them both feel regrettably timeless.

Genuinely? I adore this album. It’s the sort of unpolished and slightly unhinged raging against

the machine that I love in good folk - a mix of traditional and original, stretched across genres,

with a fury and earnestness that is hard to fault.

A Shandy Ballad is available on Bandcamp and comes with a lovely and detailed booklet with

SOPHIE SCHLEICHER