Royal Concert Hall

22nd Jan

Last night at a packed Glasgow Royal Concert Hall we were witness to a magnificent musical and visual feast. King Creosote’s 9 piece band and 8 singers pulled off a stunning accompaniment to Director Virginia Heath’s lovingly collated images of a bygone Scottish era. It’s fair to say that both the music and the film could almost stand alone as fully formed pieces, but in combination, in a live setting, the experience was simply overwhelming.

Kenny Anderson’s keening tenor was the perfect foil for the nostalgic and evocative images. Opening number Something To Believe In set the tone for the whole performance as images of; docks, North Gardner Street in Partick, the Highlands and Islands, foggy cobbled roads and dockland flashed by to a beautifully realised number played by the whole band.

The film was split into sections giving us Scotland at work, war and play. Over the course of the film we were taken to the smoky streets and factories of the city to the beauty of the Scottish countryside and beyond to the bleak Island Scottish fisheries. In Miserable Strangers we even got as far as New York with Scots emigrating abroad.

Industry contrasted pouring molten metal in a steel work with the bottling of whisky. Bluebell Cockleshell gave us girls skipping through the streets to traditional songs. The music throughout matched the mood of the film perfectly and the band rose to the occasion.

Support act Tiny Ruins are basically a vehicle for singer-songwriter Hollie Fullbrook and were the ideal addition to the evening with dreamy melodies and Fullbrooks pure vocal.

All in all there was too much to digest or describe in a simple review. Suffice to say that the evening perfectly represented the aims of Celtic Connections and that King Creosote and Virginia Heath have much to be proud of.

Reviewer : Dave Ivens