Review | Future Folk with Amy Goddard and Vicar's Crackpipe at The Square Kitchen, Portsmouth: 'A pair of intimate and very different performances'

The England women’s team is obviously having an incredible run at Euro 2022, and on the night of the semi-final it would appear I was in the minority in preferring to take in a gig.

As a result there were barely enough in the audience at the latest Future Folk night to scrape together a full footie team.

But the two acts gamely played on, and for those of us who were there, we were treated to a pair of intimate and very different performances.

First up was Portsmouth’s Amy Goddard – a solo singer-songwriter, visual artist, music teacher and also a luthier – she made the guitar she plays.

Her songs draw you in, there are hints of Joni Mitchell in her delivery, often inviting quiet contemplation – like Cornish Mist, inspired by a camping trip to Tintagel and about visiting a favourite place with someone you love as you grow older together.

The more up-tempo Make Your Mark, about what drives prisoners of conscience is a high point.

There’s also a spirited cover of American singer-songwriter John Stewart’s Hunters of The Sun.

She finishes with a ‘silly song’, The Hedgehog Song, about a pet with an – ahem – spiky demeanour, which her husband says is like her. The song morphs into Buddy Hollie’s Peggy Sue, renamed Heggy Sue – which is of course the pet’s name.

Check out her new album Rise.

Up next are the magnificently named trio Vicar’s Crackpipe. While there is neither a cassock nor drug paraphernalia in sight, with guitar, fiddle and accordion they do have a fine line in foot-stomping songs and tunes in the English and celtic folk traditions.

They also have a penchant for the darker side of English folk – nicely demonstrated in their versions of Golden Vanity and Gallows Pole.

There’s even a cover of the blues standard Hi-Heel Sneakers.

So, very much a game of two halves, with both teams on form.

To continue the terrible football metaphors, let’s call this a score-draw, but both acts deserve a bigger audience.

I am told the acts at Future Folk are routinely of this high calibre, and at only £3 entry, certainly worth a punt. The next one is on August 23.