Festival Music
Very Cellular Songs: The Music of the Incredible String Band
Playhouse, Edinburgh
Nicola Meighan
fours stars
Over half a century since they formed, the Incredible String Band can still conjure psychotropic visions. This warm celebration of the Edinburgh psych-folk trailblazers offered several joyous, surreal sights – such as indie-bard Withered Hand singing The Hedgehog's Song with Barbara Dickson on backing vocals; violin virtuoso Greg Lawson swapping classical scores for patchouli-soaked mantras; and Scritti Politti's Green Gartside animatedly recalling the time he fled an Incredible String Band show, high as a kite with love for the group, and was promptly hit by a passing bus.
Curated by 60s and 70s folk-pop lightning-rod Joe Boyd, the evening's diverse, stellar cast included enduring Incredible String Band ally and bassist Danny Thompson, pop craftsmen Green Gartside and Robyn Hitchcock, folk luminaries Karine Polwart and Alasdair Roberts, and blues guitarist Justin Adams, on a break from playing with Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant. (Plant was a huge fan of ISB back in the day.)
Incredible String Band co-founder Mike Heron made several welcome appearances, alongside his daughter and musical sidekick, Georgia Seddon, as the group's kaleidoscopic and poetic songbook was brought to life – from Barbara Dickson's swoon-inducing Empty Pocket Blues, via Robyn Hitchcock's dizzying Chinese White and Karine Polwart's revelatory take on October Song, to a gorgeous communal rendition of A Very Cellular Song.
While ISB co-founder Robin Williamson excused himself from a similar London event on the grounds that he'd rather not look back, what struck about seeing these songs being played (and reinvented) live is that they are seasonal, cyclical, timeless and hopeful. They still feel like they're looking forward. And Mike Heron still smiles, at the heart of it all. May the long time sun shine on him.
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