Ironworks, Inverness, 28 March 2010

Amy Macdonald

INVERNESS must have been eagerly awaiting the return on Amy Macdonald, as the opening night of her tour at the Ironworks has been sold out for months. Having been a fan of Amy Macdonald since her Belladrum appearance in 2006, this would be the 3rd time I’d seen her perform live, the 2nd time at the Ironworks, and I was keen to hear if her new material lived up to her first album.

When she opened with a song from her new album, A Curious Thing, the crowd seemed somewhat subdued. However, things soon picked up with a couple of songs from the first album.

Macdonald’s new album most definitely has a rockier edge to it than the first, perhaps something to do with working with Paul Weller, who features on a number of tracks on A Curious Thing (unfortunately he did not make a guest appearance at the Ironworks). Macdonald’s love of rock also showed with a fantastic cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’, which certainly seemed to appeal more to the older members in the audience.

Her current single, ‘Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over’, was a definite highlight for me, along with the next single from the album, ‘Sparks’. Although I enjoyed hearing songs from the first album again, it felt at times that Macdonald was simply going through the motions, having performed them so many times in the past few years, while her real energy was saved for her newer material.

However, it was Macdonald’s older material from her first album that seemed to provoke the biggest audience reaction, and had people singing and dancing along. Favourites like ‘Mr Rock and Roll’ and ‘L.A.’ were much better received by the audience than her new material, which I feel is a shame because the new album to me sounds much improved.

Perhaps the majority of the audience have yet to buy the new album, but after Macdonald’s performance, I would imagine a fair number of them will be adding it to their CD collection.

© Elizabeth Sinclair, 2010

Links

• Amy Macdonald
• Ironworks