Music Review: Slaid Cleaves, Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Edinburgh

Slaid Cleaves heeded his mentor, Don Walser's advice well. As a singer-songwriter-guitarist newly arrived in Austin, Texas from Maine, Cleaves befriended the man once dubbed "the Pavarotti of the plains" whose assessment was that Cleaves couldn't half make folks cry but he should make them smile, too. Cleaves did all that and more on this latest visit.

Yet another of the late Glasgow promoter Billy Kelly's discoveries, Cleaves has built a loyal following in these parts, as this near-capacity gig confirmed, for his literate, character-filled storytelling style of songwriting. He's long had a great ear for a tale, such as the one gleaned half-way through a beer with the hero of old favourite Horses and Divorces and that's continued into newer songs. Still Fighting the War, the title track of his most recent album, is an all too real, if sympathetically handled, observation of post-traumatic stress.

Cleaves is a generous performer, giving his accompanist, Scrappy Jud Newcomb plenty opportunities to display his spontaneous, and ever-apposite blues, country and western swing guitar chops and lending his clear, lightly weathered voice to songs by fellow songwriters who haven't had the exposure that he's enjoyed. Karen Poston's haunted Lydia and Steve Brooks' witty, wordy Everette were interpreted superbly and the aforementioned Walser's Rolling Stone from Texas featured Cleaves' impressive yodelling talents.

Tributes to fellow Austin resident Ian McLagan and Texas itself, in Cleaves' own exuberantly rhyming Texas Love Song, were other standouts over two sets of sustained high standards that were matched and more by Cleaves and Newcomb strolling through the audience singing and picking the marvellously persuasive, gospel-style encore, Go for the Gold.