Badenoch Centre, Kingussie, 13 September 2011

WHILE songs in English have featured less in Capercaillie’s repertoire over recent years, lead vocalist Karen Matheson has steadily broadened their inclusion among her solo material, here performing several newly-arranged contemporary covers and a traditional Child ballad – works-in-progress for her next solo album – alongside a selection of her signature Gaelic fare.

Backed by a strikingly vibrant array of instrumental colours and textures – courtesy of James Grant on acoustic, semi-acoustic and steel guitars, Donald Shaw on keyboard and accordion, Anna Massie on guitar and mandolin and Ewen Vernal on double bass – this made for a richly varied though uniformly captivating set, with Matheson sounding wholly in her element as she continues to spread her creative wings.

Singer Karen Matheson

After opening with the hushed, rhapsodic ‘Caol Muile’ (The Sound of Mull), to the melody of the Christ Child’s Lullaby, underlaid by soft synth shadings and displaying her exquisitely modulated vibrato, she moved on to Shaw’s lively setting of ‘The Diamond Ring’, before reverting to Gaelic for Sorley Maclean’s stirring ‘Calbharaigh’ (Calvary), where the language’s dark power was tellingly reinforced by deep, rumbling bass and restive piano.

Other established favourites included the luminous pastoral paean ‘Glean Baile Chaoil’ (Ballachulish Glen) and the Presbyterian Revival-era ‘O nach eisdeadh tu’n sgeul le aire’ (Oh, that you would listen to the tale attentively), a rousing jeremiad whose tricksy rhythms rivalled those of a subsequent sparkling puirt-a-beul set. Among the new songs, ‘Grant’s Little Gun’, a touchingly fervent avowal of parental love, Si Kahn’s poignant ‘Aragon Mill’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ stood out particularly strongly, all crowned by Matheson’s blissfully limpid, liquid, delicate yet trenchant delivery.

The synthesis of Iain Morrison’s soulful alt-folk balladry and fellow Leòdhasach Daibhidh Martin’s poetic English and Gaelic storytelling, which opened the programme, is one of the most distinctively beguiling sounds on the current Scottish scene, any lack of polish in its presentation being offset by its intimate, heartfelt, labour-of-love charm.

Dream-like or fairytale imagery, miniature mythic narratives and sidelong vignettes of love or loss were conjured by interwoven sung and spoken lyrics, each apparently arising from the same core theme or idea, but overlapping and reflecting upon each other rather than merely reiterating. Despite the pair’s diffident manner and the material’s unusual nature, the audience seemed thoroughly entranced by their fresh creative twist on the traditional Gaelic kinship between poetry and song.

© Sue Wilson, 2011

Links

• Blas 2011
• Sue Wilson