RM Hubbert
RM Hubbert
Mitchell Library, Glasgow
Nicola Meighan
Glasgow axe-sorcerer RM Hubbert should have been a salesman. "I've got a very cute dog to feed," he told the sold-out audience at his biggest headline show to date, by way of encouraging record sales. "You wouldn't want to be responsible for his death, would you?"
It was a deadpan moment in an evening infused with a sense of occasion: Hubbert confessed to being overwhelmed by the turnout, and the show felt like a celebration of his last few years - 2009's First & Last, 2012's Thirteen Lost & Found (which won the Scottish Album of the Year Award) and last year's Breaks & Bone.
The gig shone a light across those records, which Hubbert terms The Ampersand Trilogy. The songs therein have gradually dealt with, then drawn a line under, the musician's parental bereavement, marital breakdown and chronic depression - from the raw grief of 2009's Jumphang, through the warm epitaph of 2012's For Joe, to the new-found love, and hope, of last year's Dec 11. Live, they underscored Hubbert's evolution from local DIY insurgent to eloquent (and blackly comic) statesman of Scottish alt-pop.
The sense of ceremony was reinforced by a brilliant opening set from cult-pop poet laureate Aidan Moffat, and by its special guests: the Cairn String Quartet. Their arrangements were as measured, sympathetic and dramatic as Hubbert's songs, and Emma Pollock's moody recital of pop-noir torch-song Half Light was stunning.
Yet, for all that, Hubbert's charms were most affecting when they were unadorned. Great is the man who sits alone in the spotlight, breaking hearts with a guitar, unleashing the loveliest dog's dinner you'll ever hear.
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