Review by Sue Wilson
The Unusual Suspects
1 Nov 2007 in Music
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 30 October 2007
The Unusual Suspects (photo - Lieve Boussauw).
WHILE the Unusual Suspects’ size, somewhere between big-band and orchestra, may be its most immediately defining feature, the project’s grand-scale approach to folk music has always been about much more than mere force of numbers.
The gloriously heavyweight impact of so many massed musicians is certainly a key weapon in the band’s armoury, but it’s the degree of ambition and finesse with which they’re deployed, in the arrangements created by chief Suspects Corrina Hewat and David Milligan, that results in a sound even greater than the sum of its parts.
That said, the band’s optimum fighting strength seems to be a line-up of around 22 – though it’s occasionally topped the 30 mark – whereas on this occasion, the second date of a short UK tour, there were 17 in the ranks.
Hardly skimpy by usual standards, but the depletion of some instrumental sections, mainly in the melody department, while others – notably brass and percussion – remained at full strength, did throw the overall mix somewhat out of kilter, an imbalance exacerbated by the Queen’s Hall’s patchy acoustics.
Which isn’t to say it wasn’t a great show: even streamlined, the Suspects are a tremendously dynamic presence onstage, clearly relishing the experience as much as their audiences do.
The central splicing of traditional Scottish instrumentation with a four-piece brass section seems to grow more sophisticated with every outing, as epitomised by the opening set of reels, with its fat, syncopated big-band licks sliding deftly between the pipes’ tight, quickfire measures, while the waltz that began the next set featured a scorching solo from saxophonist Konrad Wiesnewski, before the trumpets led into a jig.
Over the course of a two-hour show, the music as usual made the most of the myriad tonal and textural permutations available from four fiddles, an accordion, two sets of pipes, whistles, trumpets, saxophone, trombone, clarsach, piano, guitar, double bass, drums and percussion.
The all-star fiddle section – Catriona Macdonald, Anna Massie, Eilidh Shaw and Alasdair White – was foregrounded in a medley of tunes written by each, complemented by expansive, piano-based, jazz-pop backing, before accelerating to a headlong finish.
The ‘Grappa Groove’ set began with a sweet, snappy jig on clarsach, accordion and percussion, then swung into the artfully warped waltz-time of Milligan’s tune ‘Not Only But Oslo’ – although his evidently all-guns-blazing piano solo ultimately lost what should have been a thrilling battle with percussionists Alyn Cosker and Donald Hay, exemplifying the sound problems that dogged the performance.
Similarly, fiddles, vocals and even bagpipes often struggled to be heard over the brass players’ splendidly assertive blowing – though the horns could do subtle, too, as in the soft, smoky, piquantly jazz-tinged arrangements of the songs ‘When I Was In My Prime’ and ‘Time Wears Awa”, led by Hewat and Annie Grace’s radiantly bittersweet harmonies.
The concert’s second half opened with The Lorient Suite, a new, 15-minute Hewat/Milligan co-composition premiered in August at the Lorient Interceltique Festival in Brittany. A delicate, silvery harp/piano intro gradually swelled, as layers of instrumentation were shaded in, to a slow, stately march, topped with soaring trumpet fanfares – a start unfortunately marred by a recalcitrantly off-key set of pipes.
As Cosker and Hay began pounding out boldly chopped-about cross-rhythms, the momentum gradually built to a majestic 6/8 surge, laced with bright, Breton-style tonalities, and culminating in a positive firestorm of percussion.
This did create a slight sense, however, as the piece reverted to its initial theme and tempo, of the music’s having peaked too soon, although another incandescent solo from Wiesnewksi certainly lifted things again towards the end.
Looking ahead, the Suspects’ next full-scale gig, at Celtic Connections in January, certainly promises to be a memorable one, with plans afoot to record it for the band’s second album. Highland audiences, meanwhile, can catch them on the bill at the Scots Trad Music Awards in Fort William in December.
© Sue Wilson, 2007
