Music

Blueflint, Admiral Bar, Glasgow

Rob Adams

TWO STARS

Half-way through their second set Blueflint announced an experiment. There was no audience participation involved, they promised. It involved the five members of Deborah Arnott and Clare Neilson's touring band standing at various points among the audience to perform I Could Have Done More For You, a song from the East Lothian group's latest album, their third, Stories From Home.

This sort of unplugged strategy, here featuring the leaders on vocals and banjo with acoustic guitar, double bass and shaken percussion, is common among bluegrass bands and Americana acts. It lets their audiences hear how they'd sound on the back porch or in their living rooms and know, as if they weren't already fully aware, that the PA's only for volume enhancement.

Here it performed a different function: it was an oasis, a pleasant interlude during a gig where much else was pretty heavy going. The jury's still out: do Blueflint set out to be deliberately abrasive or are they just not very good? There's certainly a kind of faux naivety about their songwriting, with awkward phrases and angular melodic lines lending a raw, unhoned quality, and the leaders' singing and harmonies, especially on the Proclaimers-esque This is a Story, could strip paint.

There were effective passages: the measured fiddle and bowed bass accompaniment to the opening Light in the Window was a nice, atmospheric touch. Indeed, fiddler Danny Hart proved a handy asset with some fine flat-picked acoustic guitar on an otherwise rather prosaic The Seasons Are Changing and deft electric guitar on Patch of Green as well as adding fiddle fire on several of the proliferation of samey, rough-hewn hoedown-tempo'd songs.