Music

Andrew Combs

Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh

Rob Adams

four stars

FROM the opening song it’s clear that there’s a bit more to Andrew Combs than three chords and the truth. There’s nothing wrong with simplicity, of course, and it continues to serve many a troubadour well, but there’s something refreshing and downright appealing about Combs’ sense of harmonic and melodic enquiry.

It’s the Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s guitar playing that makes the first impression onstage, his lightly percussive finger-picking denoting a confident solo performer whose studio work is often much more liberally arranged. As he moves into a more chordal approach his guitar playing keeps a subtle backbeat behind a voice that suggests as much cultured Memphis soul as it does rootsy country and he’s not afraid to use it wordlessly as a tool to develop a song’s shape.

His “mouth trumpet” solo on Rose Coloured Blues was authentically brassy. He also gets close to yodelling on occasion and even adds some whistling that’s as soulful as his singing. As was the case with his touring buddy and opening act here, Barna Howard from Eureka, Missouri, he enhances his lyrics with rich, well observed characterisation and honest realism. Combs might have self-deprecatingly dismissed his Pearl as “my social worker’s song” but it distils many believably troubled lives into its gritty lines and Foolin’ brings him wittily into the age – and exaggerations – of social media.

In the end it’s Combs’ craftsmanship that stays with the listener. You get the sense of someone who’s studied songwriting, from Buddy Holly through the Beatles, Dan Penn and John Hartford, and without necessarily sounding like them has let their spirits guide him as he’s found his own classy way.