Lews Castle, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, and other venues, 11-14 July 2012

WITH ticket sales up by 7% on last year, and merchandise by a whacking 38%, the 17th Hebridean Celtic Festival was rated by many regulars as one of the best yet, bucking the recessionary trend not only in financial terms, but with a significant expansion of its programme.

WHERE previously the main-arena concerts took place only in the evenings, this time the music also ran throughout Friday and Saturday afternoon, building further on 2011’s addition of a smaller second stage to the original giant marquee in Lews Castle grounds. Total attendance was slightly over the 15,000 mark, roughly half from the Western Isles themselves, plus visitors from 19 different countries – at a conservative estimate, Stornoway’s population must have at least doubled over the four days.

The Proclaimers (photo Leila Angus)

The largely dry weather, too, was in marked contrast to other festivals’ mud-swamped fate this summer, with plentiful sunshine on Saturday encouraging the crowd to take their ease on the grass between bands, many quaffing from pitchers of Pimms – who must have seen a major spike in their Highland sales figures over the weekend – while kids dressed as pirates (that being the day’s designated theme) ran merrily around.

It’s not that the Heb Celt didn’t already feel like a fully-fledged festival – it was, after all, on the strength of its 15th outing in 2010 that it won Best Large Festival at last year’s Scottish Events Awards, beating both Celtic Connections and Edinburgh’s Hogmanay to the title. Nonetheless, the choice of stages and all-day programming – together with the indoor concerts and late-night Festival Club at An Lanntair, the village-hall shows outside Stornoway, the street entertainment around town and a fast-growing array of independent fringe events – added a substantial extra dimension, putting it even more firmly on a par with other top gatherings in its field, from Cambridge to Tönder.

This heavyweight clout was once again reflected in the Heb Celt’s choice of headliners, including both those who’ve gained mainstream media exposure – The Proclaimers, The Waterboys, Kassidy, Admiral Fallow – and such leading Celtic/folk names as Mànran, Heidi Talbot, Beoga and Skerryvore. Mànran’s presence, though, along with Mod Gold Medallist Isobel Ann Martin, Brave soundtrack star Julie Fowlis (performing her multi-media Heisgeir show), young Skye piper Angus Nicolson’s trio and the even younger three-piece Muran, who won their slot in a open pre-festival competition, simultaneously reaffirmed one of the Heb Celt’s unique founding signatures, its commitment to and celebration of the local Gaelic culture, in both traditional and modern guise.

The show must go on - Sketch arrive by RIB (photo Leila Angus)

Sketch, the new line-up led by ex-Peatbog Faeries drummer Iain Copeland, fall emphatically into the latter camp, splicing fiddle/pipes-led tunes and Maeve MacKinnon’s Gaelic vocals with live electronic beats and programmed soundscapes – and if the main buzz about them over the weekend wasn’t to do with their music, this was no reflection on the exhilarating calibre of their closing Stage 2 set on Saturday night: quite the opposite, as it turned out.

After word came through on Friday that the band were stuck in Canada, following visa glitches en route back from gigs in Winnipeg and Vancouver, further flight delays saw them arriving in Glasgow too late to make the Stornoway ferry from Ullapool, and ultimately having to cross the Minch in an open rigid inflatable. This epic two-and-a-half hour journey, complete with stiff breeze and lively swell, is already inscribed in the Heb Celt annals of heroism, along with their straight-from-boat-to-stage performance, still drenched and frozen as they were.

Most of the new six-piece band led by firebrand Scottish/Irish pipers Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson, by contrast, had chilled out ahead of their main-stage gig on Saturday with a couple of days’ fishing over in Uig – and thus were in ideally fresh fettle to unleash a veritable firestorm of thrilling instrumental virtuosity, with the frontmen’s intrepid duelling expanded three ways by fiddler Adam Sutherland’s brilliantly adventurous agility, their densely-layered panoply of tunes taking flight from powerful, precision-honed rhythm work, courtesy of guitarist Ali Hutton, bassist Duncan Lyall and drummer Fraser Stone. Created almost by accident after a Festival Club encounter between the pipers’ respective trios at Celtic Connections in January, this is a band set to take the scene by storm.

The Waterboys (photo Leila Angus)

Friday’s main-stage double whammy of Admiral Fallow followed by The Proclaimers proved a tremendously winning combination to round off the night, with the former Glasgow indie-folk outfit – having warmed up with a pub gig in Ullapool the previous gig – demonstrating exactly why they continue on such an accelerating roll, following the release of their second album, Tree Bursts in Snow. From minimal acoustic balladry to grand-scale power pop, heartlifting singalong hooks to obliquely barbed lyrics, they encompassed a boldly diverse spectrum of new material, older favourites and unrecorded gems, complementing Louis Abbott and Sarah Hayes’s piquantly blended vocals with arrestingly distinctive instrumentation, including flute, clarinet, accordion and vibraphone.

Unlike Abbott, and despite receiving their full due of the Heb Celt’s famously warm reception, the Reid brothers weren’t in much of a mood to chat, but otherwise gave their all unstintingly throughout a 90-minute set, highlighting both the classic catchiness of their best material and the intricately twinned vocal prowess that underpins it, reinforced by an exuberantly tight and punchy band.

Kassidy, making their Heb Celt debut at the top of Thursday’s bill, may have been a lesser-known quantity in a folk-based context, but by the end of the night had won hordes of new fans – and been bowled over themselves by the atmosphere – after showcasing the impishly unpredictable yet richly musical variety of styles they’ve evolved from their original four-guitars/four-vocals format. Excitement over The Waterboys’ appearance may have derived more from past glories than present quality, with the big hits rarely approaching the magic of yesteryear, and their recent Yeats-based material receiving a relatively polite response, while ending their main set, excluding encore, after barely an hour seemed decidedly stingy by Heb Celt standards – but by this point on Saturday night, nothing was going to mute the crowd’s enthusiasm.

Among the newer names mixed throughout this year’s programme, highlights included the aforementioned Angus Nicolson Trio, cooking up an impressively big, diverse and original sound for such a compact line-up, and the frighteningly talented young Canadian brother/sister duo of Qristina and Quinn Bachand – she’s 21, he’s just 16 – reminiscent of a young Liz Carroll and John Doyle on fiddle and guitar, and a young Cathy Jordan on vocals.

Edinburgh singer-songwriter Adam Holmes, with his band the Embers, potently affirmed his one-to-watch status, combining huskily melancholic vocals with heart-on-sleeve lyrical economy, while back on the main stage US sibling-led combo Larkin Poe – formerly the Lovell Sisters – delivered an exhilarating, stormy display of bare-knuckle blues-rock. All in all, thanks to a cannily adroit balance of continuity and innovation, there’s no disputing that the Heb Celt’s onward and upward progress continues – and if it can do so during current straitened times, the years to come look bright indeed.

© Sue Wilson, 2012

Links

• Hebridean Celtic Festival