Edinburgh Folk Club, 19 March 2008

Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers (© Findlay Napier)

FOLLOWING the swansong late last year of his previous band, the popular traditional outfit Back of the Moon, the singer, songwriter and guitarist Findlay Napier has wasted no time launching this new four-piece line-up, again featuring his good lady Gillian Frame on fiddle and backing vocals, now alongside percussionist Paul Jennings and Douglas Millar on keyboards.

Napier has been emerging as a songwriter of increasingly impressive stature for some years now, in his Queen’s Anne’s Revenge side-project with Nick Turner (of Watercolour Music) as well as via Back of the Moon’s repertoire, and here focused primarily on original material, much of it again co-written with Turner.

Not that he’s turned his back on traditional songs, featuring three such in the set-list on this occasion, among them a brilliantly dramatic rendition of the corpse-strewn classic ‘Lambkin’ (the plot of which was trenchantly summarised as “The Shining meets EastEnders“). And with this being only the Mountaineers’ third-ever gig, after a well-received debut at Celtic Connections, there are plans to incorporate more as their repertoire evolves.

Right now, however, Napier is clearly relishing the chance to put his own work centre stage, and it certainly merits such standing, especially matched with his colourfully expressive, thrillingly powerful voice.

It takes a brave soul to write a song about a suicide note being mistaken for a shopping list (‘The Note’), or one expressing the viewpoint of a coma victim on a ventilator (‘Just One Umbrella’) – and a highly skilled author to carry it off as Findlay does, bringing story and character to life with wonderful vividness and economy.

Another number, whose title I didn’t catch, drew inspiration from the Green Welly Shop at Tyndrum, picturing a café worker on night shift being visited by imaginary friends – or are they ghosts? – with a winning blend of poignancy and whimsy. Having ended on a high note with the irresistibly catchy, ebullient ‘George’ – already a favourite among Queen Anne’s Revenge fans – Napier returned to thornier subjects for the encore, addressing US high-school shootings and gun culture in oblique but telling fashion in ‘Hard To Stay’, its punchy lyrics aptly framed by bluesy riffs and honky-tonk piano.

His overall stylistic palette, and that of the band’s arrangements, took in elements of folk, rock, pop, country and even a touch of jazz, united by a voice whose rugged, vibrant, superbly commanding accents remain entirely his own.

© Sue Wilson, 2008

Links

• Findlay Napier