Lews Castle Green, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 22 August 2009

THIS IS August in Lewis. Like an army of minute junkies the midges are getting their score from each square millimetre of exposed flesh, and the thin grassy crust on the porridge of mud beneath our feet is threatening at any moment to break open and swallow us all into its mulchy darkness.

Our Small Capital

Spare a thought, then, for Lewis’s only craft brewer, Andy ‘Funky’ Ribbens, who, over the summer, has all but taken up residence in that dubious Stornoway glade known as The Castle Green to ply his Hebridean Brewery wares at three successive al fresco distractions – the Heb Celtic Festival, the Stornoway Tattoo, and last weekend, Sounds In The Grounds.

Sounds In The Grounds (SITG) arrived on this much tramped two acres of Stornoway turf hot on the heels of the highly successful Homecoming Tattoo, which graced the glade just two weeks before, and with the clouds of indifference that was the hallmark of this year’s Heb Celtic Festival still visible but receding over the horizon.

The SITG festival is a one day event organised by Western Isles Nu Music Trust (WIN MT) – a community organisation that exists to promote local music and musicians working in the rock / pop / indie dimension, and to bring similar acts from elsewhere to the islands. For this festival jolly Tapster Ribbens was agreeably located in the new acoustic tent enabling him and his staff to at least enjoy a small snifter of the acts on offer.

The acoustic tent, a hay-baled snug that offered something of a country fair hoe-down feel with beer on the back wall, home baking by the door and a plank stage occupying the greater space, was a kind of home-from-home for the Festival’s many punters who slipped from main stage to acoustic tent as the sets alternated between the two, and in this cosy haven such palatable fare as Strike The Colours could fairly be enjoyed.

Strike The Colours is essentially a vehicle for the song writing talents of guitarist / fiddler Jenny Reeve, who has aided the likes of Idlewild and Reindeer Project, and who contributed to Snow Patrol’s ‘Eyes Open’ success.

J Reeve is also a long-term collaborator with Malcolm Middleton (about whom read on) , and was here found borrowing MM’s pianist, Jim Lang, for a set of highly pared down and at times delicately willowy offerings, more on the introspective side of Reeve’s usually more joyous indie mix, but which provided nonetheless an engrossing few moments of open soul lyricality. I wished for more of Reeves, really, but this being Stornoway the entire festival programme started late due to a local funeral and the sets were necessarily truncated.

On the main stage meanwhile, The Boy Who Trapped The Sun – aka local singer / songwriter Colin MacLeod – who recently signed to the mighty Geffen Records, and who is surely a shoe-in for greater things – beguiled us with his slightly alt. ironic and oft times warm hearted take on country, folk, pop and indie stylings. His good is very good, exceptional in fact, and I note that TBWTTS left the SITGs stage heading for a few gigs at Borderline in good ol’ London Town, a more intimate setting that would surely bring out his best. It’d be interesting to read a review of how that gig panned out, but TBWTTS remains a ‘watch this space’ act for 2009/2010, if on this occasion proceedings were a little too laid-back to show him at his intense and engaging best.

Next on to the main stage came Dundee’s finest, The Hazey Janes, who apart from being named after one of Nick Drake’s finest songs, also have something of a spiritual debt to the troubled songster. The Hazey’s have made a name for themselves of late with their pandemically infectious anthemic melodies (is it pop, is it country, is it country rock pop?), at its most catchable in this set on their recent single ‘New York’.

This is unashamed good time music, with a saucer of naive cat walk dilation in its bright eye – a lushly gorgeous and joyously inconsequential summer confection. Roll on the days when singers from the Bronx start eulogizing the chic of Lochee in such anthems.

In the meantime, SITG’s stage provided us with the chance to play “make your minds up time” on the real tenets of our small nation’s Psyche. On one hand we had on the stage the sunny delight of the Hazeys and the legacy they represent of brillo, frothy Scot’s pop. What an uncomplicated little darling of a nation we are in thier hands. On the other, we had the chance to sample the melancholic angst of Malcolm Middleton – but more on MM later.

The strength of the local scene was confirmed once more in the form of Our Small Capital. Fronted by Willie Campbell, and pumped along by the brash drive of Bubble MacKays’ traps, this was one of the best OSC gigs this writer has seen in some time. Willie admitted to really enjoying himself halfway through this set, and to enjoying SITGs, and that reassurance launched the remainder into a committed and high-energy performance of some of their finest songs – including the always memorable ‘A Way Around The Gospel.’

Lewis’s Derek Healy, Charles Clark’s and their ‘Our Lunar Activities’ band provided perhaps the hardest edged set of the evening. Their warm chorused guitar mash and sometimes almost innocent melodies (don’t be fooled) are routed as much from The Stone Roses as they are The Pixies. Yet their music is clearly as much of now as it was of then. A set of real high quality songs.

With so many moments of goodness crammed into a mad half day of music, Malcolm Middleton had something to follow. Middleton is Falkirk’s notoriously morose indie crooner, once a half part of the great and very clever Arab Strap, who has gone it alone in recent years with his eponymous band. Much of the material performed at this gig was drawn from their latest album, the curiously named Waxing Gibbous.

With a track record of such uplifting material as the 2002 issue ‘We’re All Going To Die’ under his belt, this album promised to come out sunny-side up, and on this showing that aim has largely been achieved. The music was surprisingly heavy at times, with a good grungy underbelly adding to their angsty finger-picking indie, and whilst it lacks some of the sophistication of the Arab Strap approach it is nonetheless greatly engaging.

Middleton oft sings with a conversational intonation not far removed from that of Lou Reed, making it is easy to take pleasure in this man’s own laid-back attitude to his suffering, but there is also some real good close harmony to hear, thanks also to Jenny Reeve, and the sounds is not dissimilar at times to that favoured by alt. desert rock of the 90s, as much as it is the brasher indie guitar sounds of the UK in the 80s.

The highlight in this excellent set was the song ‘Shadows’ off of the new album, but there was also plenty else of merit to select from. Middleton’s negativity in his lyrics is laced with a frankness, insight, invention and knowing honesty that lifts it (for now) from the pit of self indulgence that it so precariously skirts, and whilst it is all the man’s own mental dark materials on display, it is strangely uplifting in equal measure.

© Peter Urpeth, 2009

Links

• Western Isles Nu-Music Trust