Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 22 January 2008

The Unusual Suspects (photo - Lieve Boussauw)

ALYTH, Lewis’ “ruby-throated sparrow”, stands tall and elegantly beautiful in an eye-watering Barbie pink corset-stringed top, minikilt and boots, but even so she and her musicians are almost lost on the vast stage of the Main Auditorium, littered as it is with an array of instruments and music stands for the twenty musicians who will follow.

She is here to launch her new CD which focuses on themes of love and conscience and on the strength of the songs we hear tonight will be coming to an iPod near you very shortly. Blessed with a voice of great beauty and purity, any composer must rejoice to hear Alyth sing his work.

Names like Boo Hewerdine, Jim Malcolm, Brendan Graham and Del Amitri’s Justin Currie are checked in the introductions and Hewerdine ‘s “A Smuggler’s Prayer” about the plight of drug mules is particularly moving. Alyth’s cohort from Sunhoney, Aidan O’Rourke, joins the ensemble for two sparkling Gaelic songs celebrating drink and tobacco, which she calls the Vices Set.

“I wish I hadn’t tied the strings of my top so tight”, she confesses afterwards. “Me, too”, mutters one of the band, a sentiment silently echoed by the male half of the audience. The CD’s title track ‘People Like Me’ is a heartfelt plea for tolerance in today’s Scotland, penned by Currie. Compellingly catchy even on first hearing, it provides a stirring end to the set and should, if there is any justice, be sung by festival crowds for a very long time to come.

Calum MacCrimmon of fast-rising stars Breabach opens the second half of the evening with his characteristically precise piping as the twenty musicians of The Unusual Suspects take to the stage. An ensemble with a claim to being Scotland’s real National Orchestra, the Suspects are celebrating their fifth anniversary, says Corinna Hewat as the applause for the band dies down.

She and partner David Milligan have created a band which is fast becoming a finishing school for trad musicians; some sixty have already joined the club. New faces tonight include Breabach’s guitarist Ewan Robertson from Grantown on Spey, whose singing on ‘Time Wear’s Awa’, ‘Both Sides the Tweed’ and ‘Cold Rainy Night’ provides several of the evening’s highlights. A relaxed yet commanding presence on stage, Ewan has a voice blessed with both clarity and warmth of timbre, glowing brightly on top of the rich big band sound.

Elegant in black lace, Corinna evokes bandleader Sue in “Some Like It Hot” as she conducts proceedings from her harp, jumping up and down to attract the attention of the boys at the back. From tapping feet to a string section which is usually jigging up and down, the demeanour of the rest of the band shows that they are fizzing with excitement like a party of schoolkids on an excursion.

If you are used to playing in threes and fours, it must be such an exhilarating experience to be part of something so much bigger. Only Peatbog Faeries’ drummer Iain Copeland is in uncharacteristically subdued mode – due to a shoulder injury – but percussionist Donald Hay more than makes up for it, dancing on the podium like a kid whose entire wishlist has been filled by Santa.

The centrepiece of the evening is “Lorient Suite”, a bravura hybrid of trad and big band composed for last year’s eponymous festival in Brittany, which throws a random selection of elements into the mix, including a pinch of seventies orchestral rock band Chicago and a dollop of authentic mediaeval minstrelsy. In less skilled hands, this could degenerate into a burach, but though the solos – excepting the riveting Milligan-Hay-Copeland-Ivitsky section – sometimes slip over the edge into self-indulgence, overall the piece thoroughly satisfies.

The evening concludes with Ewan and Corinna singing ‘Parcel o’ Rogues’ – it is, after all, only a day or two till Burns Night – while the string section abandons all restraint, dancing outright while throwing shapes with their bows. It’s been great fun, though with a less than capacity crowd the reception is not as exuberant as usual. Maybe with so many events this year, the Celtic Connections jam is being spread too thin.

Next morning, the Suspects have to get up and do it all over again, this time for a full house of Glasgow schoolchildren. Sneaking in at the back to see the effect, predictably there is some mucking around at the edges, but the hall is full of rapt faces and tapping feet. Wild cheers and applause after every tune inspire the Suspects to shine even at this early (for musicians) hour of the day.

Just imagine, for a moment, the impact this great-hearted music must have on those tender primary school souls – the Suspects are sowing seeds which will one day sprout and amaze us all.

A note to the Concert Hall’s lighting department – shining spotlights directly into an audience’s eyes for minutes on end not only feels like torture for the recipients but destroys the atmosphere artistes have worked so hard to create. Cease and desist.

© Jennie Macfie, 2008

Links

• Celtic Connections