Saturday was one of the final outings for the Moulettes' Bears Revenge album, at a gig in Islington town hall that also had Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker on the bill. And it was an amazing night: I took two friends who hadn't seen Moulettes before and by the end they were both slightly dazed by the sheer volume and energy of the thing, which some might say defies description. However, I am characteristically undeterred...
It's got a folky vibe while consisting only of original songs, but with more energy on one stage than you'd normally get in an entire folk festival: something that Shepley got around nicely by booking them this year. Comparisons with Bellowhead and The Destroyers are apt because at one stage there were 15 of them playing - not even including Arthur Brown, who appeared in full make-up towards the end. But neither Bellowhead nor The Destroyers have a bassoonist in a dirndl, or the majority of their melody lines played by a cello and a fiddle. And it's all about the girls. When they really let rip they have a touch of the Indigo Girls about them, musically speaking, exploding with colour and romance: imagery piles on top of swooping, banging, melodies in such a way that you feel you're being taken on a magical journey to a place they found themselves. As it turns out,this is entirely what they had in mind.
They're also extremely playful, something that got them into hot water in Liverpool, where they have a hard-earned reputation as sexually deviant pagans. But there was a disturbing rumour going around that Ruth Skipper - of the dirndl, the bassoon and, just recently, the Bride-of-Frankenstein-style hairdo - would be leaving the band at the end of this tour, due to commitments to her medical career: she is a qualified doctor.
"But I'm not going," she said.
Yay!
"We did loads of auditions, including several French people who couldn't understand our lyrics. So we were treated to their interpretations of our lyrics instead, which was, um, interesting."
But there was no bassoon-playing, dirndl-wearing Bride-of-Frankenstein-a-like among them?
"Not a one. But I'm not wearing the dirndls any more. Haven't you noticed?"
Sorry. I guess they left a pretty big impression.
"Well, I'm not wearing the dirndls any more because I'm trying to move away from the whole folky thing."
I see.
"But I've got 15 of them. So it's hard to imagine they're gone forever," she added. "We may actually have found a replacement for me of sorts, but she doesn't play the bassoon."
So in what sense is she a replacement?
"She sings."
Excellent. I'd wondered whether the pianist - Matt Gest? - who'd appeared that evening might be up to the job because he had the whole bass range going on. Not that a piano packs quite the same punch as a bassoon at full, buzzing volume.
"No... My replacement would have to be a girl," she grinned.
So the girl in the dirndl with the doom stick and the badger-flashes in her hair is completely irreplaceable: who'd've thunk it? But how she's going to combine touring the forthcoming new album with a full surgery rotation in Brighton next year is anyone's guess
In one other nice piece of news, it turns out that Hannah's mum has something in common with John Spier's dad, in the sense that both took up their offspring's instruments after hearing and appreciating the success that was being made of them. So there are, presumably, now two fabulous cellists in the Miller family.
* Stop press: I understand there are, in fact, three cellists in Hannah's family, as her sister Esther also plays.
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Talking to Hannah Miller, the Moulettes' cellist and lyricist, I was aware that she kept expecting me to misunderstand her. "A lot of people don't get this..." she said at one point. "No scrub that, that sounds mad..." at another. She even offered to write her thoughts down for me, lest I was unable to do them justice aurally.
Because in her mind there is an epic story unfolding. More of that in a minute, but first a few basics.
I was handed a small pile of Moulettes CDs the other day by a promoter called Joe Cushley, who was at The Lantern Society in Clerkenwell, and got simultaneously invited to a gig. Listening to the CDs, I liked them a lot and intended to go along. But it was in Brighton (where most of the band lives) and on the day I wasn't feeling 100 per cent. Then I got a text message from Joe saying that the added filip that had spurred me to agree to go to the Las Vegas of the South Coast wouldn't be available for interview. So me and my inner sloth gave in and stayed home.
However, the more I listened to this band - and in particular to their second album, The Bear's Revenge, to be launched in July - the more I liked them (a process that continues to this day). And then, upon consideration, it became obvious that I should do something about it sooner rather than later. Because sometimes it's good to be first.
So here's the thing. The "added filip" had been that Ted Dwane, Mumford and Sons' bass player, was supposed to be at the Brighton gig and I'd hoped to have a word. As it turned out he wasn't able to make it because Britain's second most lucrative export with the initials M&S had over-run at the London studio where they're recording their second album.
What a shame, I thought, first assuming that mentioning him had been a ploy on the part of the promoter to get me to the gig. Though there was a nagging doubt because if it had been done with any cynicism, surely Joe wouldn't have texted me to let me know Ted couldn't make it?
Anyway, I now realise Ted Mumford wasn't being dangled as a PR bauble. He's listed as a band member on the CD cover, which eventually arrived a week or so later, so I think I'd been under-sold rather than over-sold.
As a result of the Mumford connection I'd imagine there's going to be a bit of a hoo-hah about the Moulettes in the mainstream media pretty soon. And I'd also imagine that the band knows it.
This because one of the Moulettes, Ruth Skipper (bassoon, vocals), is doing her medical finals at the moment but has decided to have a year out from doctoring because it looks as if this might turn out to be the band's big year - and that's not a decision to be taken lightly. "Having a doctor with us encourages my hypercondria," said Hannah. "I'll say to her 'What is this pain in my heart?' And she'll say," there was a pause for dramatic effect, "'You ate your food too quickly'."
Other clues include that they are booked to play the Mumfords' Gentlemen of the Road mini-festivals in Huddersfield and Galway in a couple of months' time and that - this is where I came in - they've just made a brilliant album.
It has the multi-instrumental virtuosity of Bellowhead, the urgency of Mumford & Sons - though without the lyrical directness (they haven't fucked anything up this time) - and the winding, melodic complexity of The Indigo Girls. It also has something unique that I was having trouble putting my finger on.
"I really enjoy fantasy realms," said Hannah. "Not crap fantasy, like lurid album covers with wizards on them. But going to other worlds, like you do in Lord of the Rings, Narnia and Philip Pullman. The songs draw on this love." We'd been speaking for a while but when I asked whether she was watching Game of Thrones, it was as if I'd taken all the tension out of the situation by mentioning the thing that she really wanted to talk about. I'd hit the main vein.
"Yes! I'm so glad you brought it up. We love it. It's amazing." I love it too - what's not to like about Lord of the Rings with shagging? So we talked about how that dwarf rocks, that it was a shame that Drogo the horse warrior had to die and how I was really missing out by not having seen any of season two yet.
"That show is like crack," she said, correctly.
Anyway, it turns out that many of the songs on The Bear's Revenge are part of a fantasy narrative that Hannah's inventing: she's writing her own mythological world through songs. "I also weave tapestries. I make them out of fabric and buttons and things. But the funny thing about fantasy is that there is a certain snobbery about it - as if it might not be real or good," she mused. Here's one of her tapestries, which is also artwork for the album. That might or might not be a dragon.
In a way the aesthetic of the Moulettes is like the title sequence of Game of Thrones: all hand-made with a theme containing swooping fiddles and cellos. Apparently several forthcoming videos will involve animating Hannah's tapestries. I must stop dwelling...
So where did the Moulettes come from? "The band started with Ruth and me when we were at school and we've picked people up along the way. We were both at school with Ted." Millfield public school in Somerset, as it turns out. "Ruth and I were both music scholars, so we didn't get out much, and I had a free haircut one day that turned into a mullet. We were joking that it was a moule-ette."
These days there are six full time members. "Myself, Oliver, Ruth, Georgina, Jim and Rob. But there are nine who can call themselves Moulettes. It's very much like an extended family. Ted was in the band until three or four years ago, until things with his other band started taking off. But it's been great having him back again. He worked on the second record with us.
"And while he was touring the States," during which Mumford & Sons were said to have cracked America, "he made some great finds. For instance, he sent us this extraordinary mandolin and banjo player called Matt Menefee who came all the way down to Winchester one day. We picked him up at the station and he did a day's session work for us. He plays progressive bluegrass."
There are lots of trad instruments on the record and Hannah describes the band's sound as "rock, pop, fantasy folk". The fiddle player, Georgina, plays folk and blue-grass, as well as sometimes making noises so assured that her classical training shows through. "She went to the Royal Northern. But Ollie (drums, vocals, guitar, banjo) is completely self-taught and Laura (Hockenhull on vocals) is a real folk-singer. She grew up in a folky family, singing with some of the Unthanks." Hannah's own father is a folk musician who makes musical instruments for a living.
And then there's this. On Friday Laura, whose partner is Ben Copper, gave birth to the newest member of The Copper Family. "Yes! We've got a tiny little Moule baby. I haven't seen her yet but her name's Georgia Rose."
Their fecundity knows no limits. Despite The Bear's Revenge not being officially launched yet, Hannah said she'd be recording some stuff for the next album as soon as we put the phone down, something which is possible, she said, because they have many years' worth of material to fall back on. She's in her late twenties now, so that's probably a decade's worth.
They've got a single out called Sing Unto Me.
"I was thinking about the Nordic mythology of singing the world into being. In the Bible it's The Word, in Narnia the lion sings the world into being. It's about the idea of the world being born and dying in a blaze of harmony," said Hannah.
And there's this, which gives you a bit more of an idea what they're like when they can hear each other.
I should think there'll be some more from them along shortly. I'm going to finally get to a Moulettes gig for a start.
In the mean time, here's that Game of Thrones title sequence in full.
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