ABC, Glasgow, 24 January 2008

Shooglenifty

AN ANNUAL feature of Celtic Connections since 1999 has been Showcase Scotland, a promotional event funded by the Scottish Arts Council and the PRS Foundation, whereby some 150 international music-industry delegates attend the festival over its middle weekend, with a pass that gets them in to see any Scottish act on the bill during that time.

Obviously Scottish artists feature prominently throughout Celtic Connections, but their programming is judiciously concentrated when these influential visitors are in town, and Showcase Scotland has a consistently successful track record of exporting our home-grown talent.

Last year’s programme saw the introduction of a sampler-style concert featuring multiple different acts: no less than ten, that first time, which perhaps made the night just a little too hectic and bitty, hence the decision to halve the line-up for 2008, giving each band 20 to 30 minutes each.

First up was the Anna Massie Band, with the young multi-instrumentalist and her cohorts, accordionist Mairearad Green and singer/guitarist Jen Butterworth, sounding in characteristically fine fettle, the sunny freshness and immediacy of their sound underpinned by wonderful ensemble suppleness and careful attention to detail.

Singer Emily Smith, like Massie a former Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year, gave a flavoursome foretaste of her forthcoming third album Too Long Away, due out in April. With her own accordion and piano accompaniment augmented by Jamie McLennan on guitar and fiddle, Ross Milligan on banjo and Duncan Lyall on double bass, a mix of traditional and original material showcased a voice that’s always been immaculately pitched and phrased, but continues to gain in power and range, even if it sometimes sounds fractionally over-controlled.

The debut performance by Stereocanto, the latest brainchild of composer, saxophonist, piper and whistle player Fraser Fifield, sounded very much like a work in progress. With a six-piece line-up completed by fiddle, electric guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and vocals, the sound is a decisive departure from the mix of folky lyricism and Garbarek-esque jazz he’s previously made his own, towards heavy, jaggy, hard-edged jazz-funk, which soon grew both abrasive and repetitious, plus the odd decidedly dicey pop ballad.

A bunch of blistering tunes from Dàimh provided the perfect antidote, however, their playing as implausibly tight and agile at breakneck speed as ever. Given a large and chatty crowd in a standing venue, they alternated the fiddle’n’pipes firepower with the more upbeat end of their new vocal repertoire, stirringly led by Gaelic singer Calum Alex MacMillan, and featuring some fine ensemble harmonies.

Shooglenifty closed out the night in magisterial style, still maintaining a level of adventurous spontaneity and a skill in pushing envelopes that few bands have ever matched. Sweeping the spectrum of moods from blissed-out dreaminess to raging rock fury, yet again reinventing old tunes alongside tracks from their most recent album, Troots, they topped off a bill that certainly did its job in presenting both the diversity and the calibre of folk-based sounds that Scotland has to offer.

© Sue Wilson, 2008

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