Folk: album review – Bird in the Belly ‘Only Dogs as Friends’

In spite of the resultant buzz around Bird in the Belly’s 2018 debut album, The Crowing, the Sussex-based four-piece didn’t appear on my radar until the following year when the follow-up, Neighbours and Sisters, was released and immediately announced itself to me as one of the stand-out folk albums of the year. Another well-received follow-up, After the City, was released in 2022 and now, some four years later, we have their long-awaited follow-up. With their typically forensic approach to unearthing compelling historical tales, Only Dogs as Friends tackles the theme of criminality and features a gruesome cast of notorious villains across its twelve songs which are drawn from a mixture of traditional broadsides, published poems and original compositions, all set to newly-composed melodies. Ben ‘Jinwoo’ Webb: “We wanted to focus on outsiders – people who have been feared or were fearful. As always, we tried to find overlooked stories and songs and this album is very character driven.”…