# Shovel Dance Collective: Everything in Readiness review – ecstatic, dissonant folk music fighting for sonic and spiritual freedom

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/shovel-dance-collective-everything-in-readiness-review-ecstatic-dissonant-folk-music-fighting-for-sonic-and-spiritual-freedom/
- Published: 2026-10-22T11:43:40+00:00
- Updated: 2026-10-22T12:30:00+00:00
- Original publisher: The Guardian (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/oct/22/shovel-dance-collective-everything-in-readiness-album-review
- Topics: Americas, Culture, Entertainment, Music, UK, World

## Key points

- Shovel Dance Collective reshape traditional folk with experimental noise and distortion.
- The album connects Britain’s turbulent history with present-day politics.
- The review finds its sound disorientating, euphoric and distinctive.

## Summary

Shovel Dance Collective’s third album, *Everything in Readiness*, recasts traditional British folk through distorted recordings, drones, noise and abrupt shifts in sound. The review describes its mix of old songs and experimental arrangements as both disorientating and euphoric, offering a forceful account of Britain’s turbulent past that resonates with the present.

The nine-piece London group move between lo-fi recordings, unaccompanied singing, ambient passages and a tumultuous version of the coalminers’ song “Jowl, Jowl and Listen”. The album opens with a suite lasting more than 10 minutes and includes a late-1940s hunting song, “Tally Ho! Hark Away!”; the closing track is “I Wish There Was No Prisons”. The review places the group’s approach in a wider tradition of folk revivals during periods of social crisis, while emphasising its distinctive sound and left-wing politics.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.