Capercaillie
Capercaillie
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Stuart Morrison
It was of particular satisfaction, on a night when a television programme alluded to identifying The Voice, to find the actual voice was standing right in front of us at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. For, if there is a finer voice than Karen Matheson's on God's green earth, I have not yet heard it. Sure, she is no Katy Perry or Beyonce in that she doesn't bellow in the manner so beloved of modern producers of female pop records. She does, however, possess the most superb range, control, restraint, grace and in the truest sense, class.
And it is class that made such a difference here. They all wanted the ball, to use a footballing analogy and knew exactly what to do with it. From the back, where Che Beresford's gloriously understated, yet compelling, drums merged seamlessly with Ewan Vernal's fluid bass, through Manus Lunny's bouzouki pyrotechnics (I'd never heard one played through a wah-wah peddle before) and Charlie McKerron's fiddle wizardry, to the stellar front line of Matheson, Michael McGoldrick and Donald Shaw. The band were celebrating their thirtieth anniversary, so they've had a wee while to get the hang of it and a new album was released last year. The title track, At The Heart Of It All, proved one of the evening's highlights. Joined by traditional music superstar Kris Drever on vocals, this was Capercallie at their smoothest.
Julie Fowlis was another special guest whose vocal harmonies with Matheson were special indeed. We had songs and mouth music from all over the Scottish traditional music map and a bone fide top 40 hit in the shape of Coisich A Ruin.
Then there w ere the instrumentals. The atmosphere in the concert hall does not encourage mass whooping and hollering and it took the third set of jigs and reels of the evening to get the audience out of their seats and dancing, which was a pity because by that time we were on the last encore.
No matter. This was gob-smackingly good and if the rest of the festival comes anywhere near this standard, all will be well.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article