Inverness Airport, Inverness, 12 September 2011

REFLECTING the allied home-grown and international nature of Blas itself, the festival’s resident band for 2011, The Outside Track, comprises two Scottish members, harper Ailie Robertson and accordionist Fiona Black; two from Canada – Cape Breton fiddler Mairi Rankin and Vancouver-born singer/flautist Norah Rendell – and Irish guitarist Cillian O’Dálaigh.

Performing traditional and contemporary material from across these various home territories, and with Rankin and O’Dálaigh also contributing backing vocals and stepdancing to the mix, the band certainly offer a well-appointed package, featuring here – in Blas’s now-regular adopted/adapted venue in the café at Inverness Airport, which was filled to capacity – alongside a diverse selection of Gaelic-based sounds.

The Outside Track at Inverness Airport (image © Reaaz Mohammad, courtesy Blas Festival)

Maggie MacDonald, performing elsewhere in the festival among her illustrious kinfolk Na Caimbeulaich, or the Campbells of Greepe, opened the programme with an unaccompanied snapshot sample of songs from the family’s native Skye – an emigrant’s plaint, a lullaby, a lament and a puirt-a-beul set – expertly balancing force and delicacy, intensity and understatement.

The Outside Track, too, offered a capsule collection from their wider repertoire, with the British/Canadian ballad ‘Silvy, Silvy’ straightaway spotlighting Rendell’s pliant, vivid, subtly jazz-hued vocals among their key assets, while her blend of bright and dark shadings was later enriched, in the poignant ‘Poor Lonesome Hen’, by Rankin and O’Dálaigh’s bittersweet harmonies. Other highlights included a gorgeous, and gorgeously arranged – albeit somewhat regrettably named – Quebecois tune (translating as ‘Reel of the Cramped Buttock’), and though other instrumental sets proved less distinctive and/or polished, the band have recently embarked on a seven-month stretch of international touring, which should do much to consolidate their sound.

After the interval, former Blas co-director Brian Ó hEadhra swapped his Fear an Taigh hat to contribute half-a-dozen, mostly original Gaelic songs, displaying his mettle both as a singer and a contemporary songsmith. His gentle yet authoritative, stern yet soulful tones were arrestingly edged by Fiona Mackenzie’s bright, ardent harmonies, while standout numbers included ‘Fathainn’, inspired by the evacuation of St Kilda, vividly evoking the islanders’ dislocation via deft use of dual perspectives and tempo changes.

Aspects of singer-songwriter Iain Morrison and poet/storyteller Daibhidh Martin’s performance could variously have been described as eccentric, idiosyncratic and occasionally bordering on shambolic (exacerbated, admittedly, by initial technical problems with Morrison’s guitar), but it was also suffused with charm, wonder and evocative soft-spoken eloquence, as their voices and words aligned in a series of love-lyrics, parables and modern-day fairytales, artfully informed by their native Lewis heritage.

© Sue Wilson. 2011

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• Blas 2011
• Sue Wilson