Mareel, Lerwick, Shetland, 8 December 2012

BACK in June, former Arab Strap frontman Aidan Moffat and jazz composer and pianist Bill Wells won the Scottish Album of the Year Award for their debut collaboration, Everything’s Getting Older.

DESCRIBED by judges as “a bruised and beautiful wonder”, the album has won widespread admiration. So it was fortunate indeed to have the opportunity to see the pair perform in Mareel last Saturday night, backed by a three piece band.

Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells

Those of us who attended the concert were fortunate, too, to witness a remarkably mature and entertaining support set from 16-year-old Hannah Hastings. Not so long ago, Shetland suffered from a disappointing lack of singer-songwriters, and it is a relief to see this is now beginning to change.

Lyrically and melodically, Hastings was engaging from start to finish, with superb vocal control to boot. She also seemed confident and entirely natural on stage, and was funny with it. “That song made me sound like a dirty feminist”, she quipped, after one particularly challenging number. A laugh from the audience was accompanied by an approving shout: “Good!”

I’m looking forward to hearing more from this young and very talented songwriter in the future.

The success of Everything’s Getting Older is undoubtedly a triumph of content over style. As they shuffled onstage, Aidan Moffat, Bill Wells and band looked as though they might have slept in their clothes the previous night, or perhaps not even slept at all. Rough and shambolic in appearance, the restrained beauty of their performance was made all the more entrancing.

Bill Wells piano was subtle and sweet, holding the music together without ever seeming too dominant. The mute trumpet, violin, double bass and bare bones drum kit all weaved their way through the songs, always adding something, yet never more than necessary.

But it was Aidan Moffat’s vocals that really stood out, bringing richness and depth to the laid back, jazzy sound. Both in the spoken word numbers and when singing, Moffat was captivating – the audience held by every line. Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes downright filthy, Moffat is a superb lyricist, able to capture wonderfully a kind of brutal, ordinary beauty, and a tenderness laced with loss. His narratives are astute and honest.

The evening’s highlights for me included ‘Box It Up’ – a truly moving love song, tainted by infidelity – and ‘The Copper Top’, set in “the nearest pub to the crematorium”, whose “once brilliant copper roof has oxidised over the years to a dull, pastel green.” Unable to fully distract himself with alcohol from the funeral he has just left behind, Moffat gazes up at that roof and observes, brilliantly, that “Everything’s getting older”.

Yet throughout the set there are glimpses of light – a fragile positivity that sits perfectly alongside the darker subject matter. An appreciation of beauty and of love, Moffat seems to recognise, requires an equal and opposite appreciation of mortality.

In the night’s encore, ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’, the singer directs his words towards a child, offering this advice: “You see, we’re all just links in a chain / and all life is finite / so use your time wisely / look after your teeth / and try not to hurt anyone. / And remember, we invented love / and that’s the greatest story ever told.”

Wise words, indeed.

© Malachy Tallack, 2012

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• Malachy Tallack