Music

Pete Morton, Edinburgh Folk Club

Rob Adams

FIVE STARS

Six or seven songs into his opening set, Pete Morton revealed why he might have seemed particularly buoyant on this latest visit to Edinburgh Folk Club. The Leicestershire-born Morton isn't given to being in any way morose or introverted onstage ,but he's just been granted access to his four-year-old son and while his description of their first meeting in eleven months, in a contact centre, and the subsequent song were movingly bittersweet, his effusive demeanour helped to light up a gig that confirmed him, as if he hasn't proved it already over the years, as a special talent.

As a chronicler of the human condition and wry observer of history and the march of progress, Morton is up there with fellow Englishmen Richard Thompson and Chris Wood, and as a people watcher, as witness his descriptions in The Café Song, he can get close to Ray Davies. Yes, he's that good. His actorly qualities and his ability to use his vocal strength for both comic and compassionate effect may bring a sense of theatre to his performances - Related to Me, told from the perspective of a female gorilla in a zoo, was priceless monkey business. But it is also sincere, believable theatre.

Using his guitar expertly to up the ante or create the gentlest of backdrops, and often breaking off to sing a cappella, Morton can marshal highly-evolved thoughts with devastating effect. He loves words and uses lots of them, not least on his "fraps" that append traditional folksong choruses to deeply persuasive, motormouth raps, but he can also present a strong argument simply, as his sobering, allegorical call for a truce between Israel and Palestine affectingly illustrated.