Before the advent of television franchises like ‘X Factor’ and ‘Pop Idol’, newly created boy bands were introduced to their prospective fans through a rigorous string of school performances, where a carefully honed and heavily packaged product was foisted upon its target audience of teenage girls.  ‘Elbow Jane’s appearance at Edinburgh Folk Club was reminiscent of this, albeit aimed at the opposite end of the age spectrum – a calculatedly over packaged and sickly sweet marketing machine.

Lead Singer (and front man) Richard Woods, referred to the band’s musical style as ‘Acoustic’, yet more technical apparatus I have never seen on the Edinburgh Folk Club stage, ‘Acoustic’ they weren’t.  The huge floor stand bearing an uncomfortably posed publicity shot of the band posing with an inflatable palm tree presided over events as a two dimensional reminder that the ‘Elbow Jane’ circus was indeed, in town.

 The use of keyboards and an electric drum kit saw to it that no matter how high a standard of musicianship ‘Elbow Jane’ boasted, it always sounded a bit like a karaoke backing track.

If you were to close your eyes during an ‘Elbow Jane’ gig, you could easily be listening to any of the top selling “boy bands” like Westlife or Boyzone.  If it weren’t for the fact that teenage audiences are so superficial regarding age and appearance, ‘Elbow Jane’ could I’m sure, have a very lucrative pop career.  Alas, they have opted for that other (perhaps just as lucrative) audience favoured by pop – women “of a certain age”, and they have carefully crafted their set to disguise the fact that they have absolutely no relevance to “folk music” whatsoever.  ‘Elbow Jane’ distract their audiences by blindsiding them with calculated rations of nostalgia, trotting out songs like ‘Something in The Way She Moves’, ‘Shower The People’ and ‘Steamroller’ at crucial times during the set.

‘Elbow Jane’s gig on Wednesday was a blot on Edinburgh Folk Club’s otherwise relatively pristine copybook, and I really hope this does not signify the opening of the floodgates with regards non-folk acts.  I have been criticised for having a “purist” attitude towards what defines folk music in the past (see opinion September) – however, even ‘Elbow Jane’ publicly conceded that they didn’t perform folk music, begging the obvious question – why book gigs in Folk Clubs?

I should note that my “star rating” refers more to the circumstances and poor labelling of a pop band in a folk setting rather than the musical abilities of ‘Elbow Jane’.  If you like that kind of thing, then I would genuinely say that they’re at the top of their game.  One does have to wonder though, how much stock you can put in a band who reminisce endlessly about their childhood on the Wirral Peninsula (near Merseyside), looking out at the “North Sea”.