Unaccompanied folk trio Coope Boyes & Simpson impress with hard-hitting tales of love and war

I would have to admit it, on paper it sounds like something of an ordeal. The prospect of a long night of music by three middle-aged a capella singers with nary an instrument to be seen, does not suggest the height of fun. But how wrong one can be.

Barry Coope, Jim Boyes and Lester Simpson are to unaccompanied singing what Bellowhead are to traditional folk. Irreverent and bombastic when they want to be, but respectful when the material deserves it, this unlikely trio of virtuoso vocalists captivate with the simplest of resources — the human voice. Nothing else. And nothing else is needed.

While the music is folk, there is nothing twee or bucolic about their songs. Instead, there are hard-hitting pieces on the horrors of war, fascism, genocide and the current recession. There is humour too, and their unscripted between-song banter crackled along, eliciting hoots of laughter from the cosy auditorium of the North wall Arts Centre.

The gorgeous venue, part of St Edward’s School, seemed to have met the threesome’s approval too. Even the catering. “It’s been a long time since we ate in a school refectory,” grinned Simpson. “We felt like thrashing a fag - it looks like that sort of place. At my school we just beat the headmaster up!”

There were tales of raucous country fairs, bittersweet songs from their native Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and jokes at our expense — the usual riff on the ‘aren’t you posh’ theme but with a few sporting quips too, even suggesting they should be awarded a harmony ‘blue’ for their previous town and gown performances here (including one show at Christ Church).

The music was sublime, each man instinctively taking the top, bottom and middle range, and encouraging the audience to join in. “It’s a community sport, not the opera,” said Simpson. “Anything that repeats is a mistake or a chorus.”

Highlights were their humorous wartime piece Lloyd George’s Beer, deadly-serious anti-fascist warning Under a Stone and utterly heart-rending rendition of the Clive James/ Pete Atkin song A Hill of Little Shoes, which deals with the aftermath of the Holocaust on the liberation of a death camp.

There were shanties, a lilting piece about New Zealand called Aotearoa (the country’s Maori name) and a tingly version of Richard Thompson’s Keep Your Distance. But it was hard-hitting songs such as The Christmas Truce, concerning the Great War (the trio are regular performers at commemorative concerts in Passchendaele, Yprès and Hill 60 in Flanders) which provided the real pin-drop moments.

Moving and captivating, Coope Boyes & Simpson are an unusual group. “It has been described as singing without music,” they laughed, recalling one unfortunate review. And it’s easy to see the joke, because music doesn’t get more real.