|  See
krisdrever.com
Review by Chris Silver
Now over a year old 'Black Water' is undoubtedly one of
the best solo albums to emerge from the Scottish folk scene
in recent times. While some might find the labelling of
it 'classic' at such an early stage in its shelf life contentious,
it is clear that in decades this piece of work will still
be up there
Drever is a somewhat enigmatic artist, and at points does
seem like something of a dark horse, whether behind Kate
Rusby or any of the other excellent performers he has made
his name collaborating with. Yet seeing the man deliver
a storming solo rendition of 'Shady Grove' to a packed Old
Fruitmarket dispelled any doubts that Drever might not be
able to sustain himself in the limelight.
The songs, all of which are of high calibre, made for a
hearty performance with contemporary numbers such as 'Black
Water' sitting seamlessly alongside traditional ones such
as 'Braw Sailing on the Sea'.
A large part of this was surely down to the sterling musicianship
Drever had behind him. As this history of recent folk music
has testified it does seem that anything John McCusker lends
his remarkably deft hands to is 'classic' waiting to happen.
Ian Carr and Alan Cutting gave us a sound worthy of such
an accolade.
Oddly though, the audience did not seem engaged by Drever's
set. For much of the performance I was restraining myself
from voicing a stereotypically folkie 'Shhhhh!' towards
the rest of the venue. The volume of this chattering was
never quite enough to detract from the performance, but
was always on the verge of doing so. The venue itself is
splendid, one of Glasgow's many 21st century shrines to
live music. I do prefer standing to sitting at a gig, yet
it seemed that many of the audience had come along for a
Friday night dance and had decided to just get pissed during
the support act.
The essential problem here seemed to be the billing of a
tune based powerhouse alongside a song based set. Now don't
get me wrong, the former is probably one of the best ways
to get people into folk music, but they simply didn't fit
well together. I found myself listening to the big band
grooves of McGoldrick with a feeling that I wasn't as drunk
as everyone else in the room and that the only way to merge
with the prevailing atmosphere was to ingest as many substances
as possible, take several items of clothing off and dance
myself into a sweaty oblivion. Needless to say I didn't.
McGoldrick is of course one of the most interesting instrumental
musicians working at the moment and observing his talents
is very enjoyable. Neither can I blame the Friday night
dancing set for turning up in droves to share in that enjoyment.
This was a gig that represented the elite of the two halves
of the trad scene- the song based and the tune based. Individually
they were resplendent, but just didn't weld together into
the sort of evening such a display of talent should be.
<< Back to REVIEWS
page
|
