Date/Time Sun 06 Jul 2025 7:45 PM
Price Online - £12 + 10% booking fee; On The Door - £15
Website: https://www.birdinthebelly.com
Bird in the Belly are a Brighton-based folk group consisting of folk duo Hickory Signals (Laura Ward and Adam Ronchetti), alt-folk singer-songwriter Ben Webb (Jinnwoo, Green Ribbons), and multi-instrumentalist and producer Tom Pryor. Together they collect little-known and forgotten lyrics, poems and stories from around the UK and set them to their own “hypnotically original compositions” (fRoots). Their sound is raw and bare-boned with “distinctively contemporary and earthy vocalising” (R2 Magazine), harking back to the 1960’s folk revival sound.
Bird in the Belly’s 2018 debut album, The Crowing, was met with critical acclaim, with the Sunday Express giving the album 5/5 and calling it folk album of the year. Neighbours and Sisters followed in 2019, and the group have toured the UK extensively, playing at festivals including Moseley, Purbeck, Warwick, Gate to Southwell, Sidmouth and Broadstairs Folk Week.
They have been featured regularly on radio including Desert Island Discs and BBC Six Music. Third album, After the City, was released in 2022, with The Guardian and The Observer calling it “an album of well realised ambition”. In January 2025, Bird in the Belly were featured in the Folk On Foot podcast, and a new album is planned for release in September.
And if all that isn’t enough to convince you of their folk credentials, one of their songs uses the word “pantaloons”.
“With the dark, bleak beginning and the softer almost Laurel Canyon sound in the rebirth this is a stunning album of deliberate contrasts” – FATEA Magazine
“Bird in the Belly are one of the most talented and unusual groups around, and here they have taken on a relatively obscure subject and made it accessible, gripping and mythical” – Folk Radio UK
“A richly woven dystopia – this dramatic lockdown album mixes lively acoustic folk-rock with desolate pastoral pieces” Neil Spencer, The Guardian and The Observer