Spa Pavilion, Strathpeffer, 28 May 2011

AFTER a promising start courtesy of local artist James Mackenzie, opening the show, Midge Ure’s voice comes blasting off the stage with all the urgent intensity of the 80s, when pop music indulged in shameless melodramatics.

And what a voice it is, a huge range, from a rich, deep register, through warm mid tones to a strong, clear falsetto. It is no surprise when he confides, after a lovely rendition of Peter Green’s beautiful ‘Man of the World’, that he will soon be on TV in Pop Star to Opera Star, attempting to sing proper Italian arias.

Midge Ure

The evening passes pleasantly as Ure strolls through Ultravox’s greatest hits, including of course perennial favourites ‘Vienna’ and ‘Lament’, the latter written while touring the Western Isles in an ill-advised Winnebago, as he tell us in a typically self-deprecating anecdote. Interspersed are a selection of covers by artists he admires from his album 10, including Scott Walker’s ‘No Regrets’ and Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust’, two of the many artists strongly influenced by that master of intensely dramatic, passionate songs, Jacques Brel.

Ure’s voice and approach is often reminiscent of Brel’s, though it becomes increasingly apparent that we are never going to hear it free of overgenerous helpings of reverb, echo and delay. It’s a shame he didn’t have the courage to sing just one song without it, bearing in mind that his was a Highland audience, used to hearing the truthfulness of the pure voice from the Gaelic tradition. It’ll be interesting to see whether he’s allowed the same level of electronic manipulation for his operatic attempt.

The show ends with ‘Dancing with Tears in My Eyes’ before a quick return for the encores, a convention which is, as he says, “all bollocks”. You can take the lad out of Glasgow, you can relocate him to the honeyed sandstone and Georgian grace of Bath… but you can’t, quite, take Glasgow out of the lad.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

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