Seen on Wednesday January 21

It took a few years for Dan Willson (aka Withered Hand) to bring his confidence as a live performer up to the same level as his skill as a songwriter. He's on cracking form in both capacities these days (Withered Hand's album New Gods was No 1 in the Sunday Herald's Top 50 Scottish Albums of 2014) and it was a special treat to see him not in solo troubadour guise but backed by a six-piece band for this festival gig. The honest vulnerability of Willson's lyrics is transformed into underdog defiance when there's an expanded ensemble on hand to mould power-pop nuggets from his songs.
I'll admit that my Portuguese doesn't even stretch to "please" and "thank you", so the details of Sao Paolo favela life contained in Criolo's headline set were lost on me. But even I could feel the energy in the room rise when the Brazilian began to fire out the slapped consonants of his raps, and as a soul singer he also has bags of charisma. Too often, though, his band retreated into a sluggish 1970s jazz-funk groove that didn't match his magnetism. Not Celtic, perhaps, but it certainly made a connection with Glasgow's small Brazilian contingent.