ABC, Glasgow, 1 February 2008

Session A9 (photo - Lieve Boussauw)

STEPPING up in place of Michael Marra after the great Dundee bard sadly had to cancel his Celtic Connections appearance due to illness would surely be a daunting prospect for any budding artist, but you’d never have known it from the way 19-year-old Sorren MacLean rose to the challenge.

MacLean, from Mull, is the son of double bassist and An Tobar director Gordon MacLean, one of the four accompanists on Marra’s most recent EP, Quintet. The planned live show was likewise to feature this line-up, also including saxophonist Steve Kettley, Dick Lee on clarinet and fiddler Kenny Fraser, who instead became MacLean Jr’s backing band for the night.

The young singer-songwriter delivered an admirably confident 40-minute set of punchy, pacy, tuneful acoustic pop, showcasing a big, expressive voice and a winning way with both memorable hooks and vintage guitar riffs.

As an eight-piece band whose members’ main projects include Capercaillie, the Peatbog Faeries, Boys of the Lough and Fiddlers’ Bid, Session A9 don’t get out as often as their many ardent fans would like. Other commitments have also been the main reason it’s taken them five years to produce a follow-up to their much-loved debut release, What Road? – although ringleader Charlie McKerron breaking his arm last autumn didn’t help the schedule either, an incident now commemorated in the new album’s title, Bottlenecks and Armbreakers.

With the recent departure of Kris Drever from the line-up, thanks to the escalating demands of his solo career and the trio Lau, Blazin’ Fiddles’ Marc Clement stood in on guitar for this all-instrumental set – although Drever does sing as a guest on the album.

Session A9’s trademarks have always been both the wealth and balance of their instrumentation – four fiddles ranged against guitars, piano, accordion and drums – aligned to the multi-layered sophistication with which they configure these components, creating a rich panoply of harmony, countermelody, cross-rhythms and complementary textures.

As well as their unbeatably rambunctious jigs, reels and jaggy Balkan-style dance tunes, standout tracks off the new album included a brilliantly strutting set of Strathspeys, brimming with vivacity and flourish, and a magnificently elegiac arrangement of Gordon Duncan’s haunting slow air, ‘The Sleeping Tune’.

Unfortunately, however, the show was dogged throughout by ill-balanced sound: with four fiddles onstage, you wouldn’t expect any problems hearing them, but here they were sometimes half-drowned in the mix, while elsewhere the intricacies of individual players’ contributions were largely obscured by poor separation. The craic amongst the band, however, was customarily mighty, launching the album in suitably high-spirited fashion.

© Sue Wilson, 2008

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• Celtic Connections