The Bon Vivant Spiegeltent, Falcon Square, 23 July 2007

Lau

THREE piece – sweet!

People in the arts often mention the “invisible wall” between performer and audience. From the moment the three members of Lau bounded on stage, still clutching their pre-show drinks, and flung themselves haphazardly onto some chairs, they made the Spiegeltent their own.

Not only was there no invisible wall, it felt like going round to your pals’ house for the craic and a bevvy. To evoke that level of intimate informality with over a hundred people takes a combination of talent and the quality the French call ‘being comfortable in your own skin’. Lau are very comfortable indeed.

And talented. Each member of the trio was already well known when they formed in 2005, and there was a buzz about them right from the beginning. Aidan O’Rourke was crowned “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the Trad Music Awards last December, and Michael Marra thinks he’s the best fiddler in Scotland, full stop.

Yes, on the strength of this show, O’Rourke is to the fiddle what Jimi Hendrix was to the guitar. He pushes the instrument to its limits, sawing at the strings like a madman – and the next minute he’ll be producing as delicate a tone as Itzhak Perlman playing a Bach Partita. A wall of noise a la Velvet Underground turns seamlessly into an improvisation which would have brought a smile to the lips of Miles Davis.

On one side of O’Rourke, Kris Drever folds down into his seat and picks up his guitar to play with the laidback careless ease that only comes to those who eat, sleep and dream music. He walked away with the Horizon Award at the BBC 2007 Folk Awards in February, and it’s easy to see why.

He can hammer out the chords or pick notes as delicately as Julian Bream, while his vocals on songs like “Butcher Boy” and “Unquiet Grave” are spinetingling. In fact, if spinetingling was an Olympic sport, we’d be sure of a gold medal.
On the far side (in more ways than one) Martin Green, with a shock of unruly hair flopping over his piano accordion, grabs an instrument which can easily sound pedestrian in the wrong hands, and dazzles us with it. His star-spangled CV straddles swathes of the music world from folk and trad to jazz and pop.

Tracks like ‘Hinba’ demonstrate some of his amazing range, as wild wails of passion alternate with throbbing punk rock chords, leavened with a touch of tango.

Despite the fact that there are three virtuosos on stage, Lau is definitely a band, a solid whole that is greater than the sum of its three parts, and which has already taken traditional music to unprecedented heights. Watch out for them, because they’re still climbing.

© Jennie Macfie, 2007

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