Chumbawamba The Subscription Rooms, Stroud. Saturday, September 11.

USUALLY, if you hear any band announce they are about to sing an English folk song from the 1380s, there's nothing for it but to load up your shotgun and head for the stage.

Add to that a selection of anti-war songs and a catalogue of folk hokum and you expect the Sub Rooms to be deserted in 10 minutes flat.

This, however, is no ordinary act. Chumbawamba have won many fans precisely because they are wilfully eclectic, dabbling in everything from shouty punk to acoustic twiddling, so this set of perfect 4-part harmony singing is no great surprise.

It soon becomes clear that Chumbawamba see themselves as the musical timelords of establishment-bashing, dipping into a selection box of anarchic songs spanning hundreds of years.

And although many of the tunes are utterly different, the sum of the parts comes across as something rather special.

Some may find singing 200-year-old antiwar songs a little pretentious but when you weave such wonderful harmonies into each number it does not really matter what the words actually are.

Erm, imagine if Ladysmith Black Mambazo came from Stoke and there were only four of them.

They might sound a bit like this.