Music LIVE REVIEWS MORRISSEY Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Mon 30 Jul ●●●●●
Waking on bone-chilling stone on the Usher Hall’s steps in a sleeping bag, contemplating poor life choices. It’s 4am. You have to get up early if you want to grasp at the hem of your idol’s robe. Fifteen hours later, inside, it’s finally, finally time for Morrissey’s arrival. Strolling on stage, he revels in his usual brand of tongue-in-cheek dramatics, juxtaposing idle chit-chat with camply sliding down against the bass drum, before mock-struggling to his feet to carol ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’. A moving ‘Every Day Is Like Sunday’ followed by the unapologetic ‘Alma Matters’ make one of his finest opening trios in some time.
‘We are all of us minorities,’ advises Morrissey to intro- duce ‘People Are the Same Everywhere’, the only of his newer songs rolled out tonight. This middle-of-the-roader accounts for one of the infrequent lulls in the evening, but poignancy is never far away as he begins ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’. Bone-rattling guitars and an impending sense of doom
signal encore ‘How Soon Is Now’ and the tidal wave of stage invaders. It gets mesmerising – all arms and flailing legs, kicks in the face, grasping at this man who’s perform- ing a song that sums up the human condition so succinctly. You begin to think: ‘I could do that too.’ So I did. Jumped the barrier and wrestled with security before being pulled on stage by Morrissey himself. The main question from friends afterwards was: ‘How did it feel?’ How does it feel to be allowed to show your appreciation to the man who sings your life? In modern life, when apathy reigns and passionate types are hailed as eccentric or weird, isn’t it nice to have something to cling to? And when it’s on stage, grabbing a confused hug and trying not to cling too much, how did it feel? In a word: sweaty. (Kirstyn Smith)
THISTLY FEST Belhaven Fruit Farm, Dunbar, Sat 28 Jul ●●●●● ARCHIE SHEPP Summerhall, Edinburgh, Wed 1 Aug ●●●●●
We’re around halfway through all-dayer Thistly Fest and there’s a buoyant feeling milling around the crowd. Perhaps it’s down to some stand-out per- formances – immense powerpop from Kilmarnock’s Fatherson; swooping synths and hammering drums from talented electro act Capitals or the truly spellbinding Remember Remember, whose instrumentation weaves magical soundscapes that swirl around the room. Perhaps it’s due to the warehouse venue, 100% rainproof and housing one bunting-clad stage, meaning no pro- gramming clashes between the superb acts on the bill. Or perhaps it’s down to the copious quantities of Thistly Cross cider. The newbie festival progresses in the same vein as evening rolls in, a heart-
warming set from Dan Wilson’s Withered Hand (cellist Hannah Shepherd pictured, above) – sunbeam country and rasping voice – preceding electro beat trio FOUND’s rhythmic tracks, featuring a fleeting cameo from Meursault frontman Neil Pennycook. Guitar strumming aplenty arrives in the guise of a Scott Hutchison’s intimate acoustic set, charming the crowd with a call for ‘any Frightened Rabbit requests’, before Woodenbox storm through their ever infectious folk/rock fare. Topping things off are alt-folk ensemble Meursault, confidently breezing on stage to deliver a howling set, highlights of which include vibrant new single ‘Flittin’’ and the bittersweet ‘Settling’. (Jo Bell)
‘I continue to listen gamely to Archie Shepp in the hope that one day it will all cease to sound like ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’ scored for bagpipes and concrete-mixer’ wrote Philip Larkin in 1966. One can relish the poet/jazz critic’s waspish prose while bemoaning his conservatism, particularly when he makes it all sound so exciting. The raging overtones of his avant-garde fire music may be toned down, but
as this gig proves, 75-year-old Shepp still honks a mighty blues, while his tenor tone remains as rich as ever. He sings too, romping through Duke Ellington’s ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’. It’s when he delivers his own songs and poems, however, that his vocals really come into their own. ‘Steam’, from his 1971 classic Attica Blues, mourns the death in a street-fight of his teenage cousin. Shepp’s throaty blues voice conveys his anger at the way poverty and racism destroys so many young black lives. It’s the soprano playing that sees Shepp the sax-man at his best, recalling the Coltrane of ‘My Favourite Things’ as he careens through Eastern-tinged scalar runs and sheets of modal harmony with a pinched, reedy tone. Back on the tenor, Shepp performs a tender ver- sion of the late Hugh Hopper’s ballad ‘Memories’, a song popularised by Robert Wyatt, who is in the audience tonight. Shepp recorded a version of the song with Whitney Houston for Bill Laswell’s early 80s project Material, making this evening’s rendition all the more touching. (Stewart Smith)
124 THE LIST 9–16 Aug 2012