| Kris Drever: Black Water (Classic Albums, Celtic Connections) **** |
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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. |