Celtic Connections
The White Buffalo
02 ABC, Glasgow
Rob Adams
three stars
ONE of the great strengths of the Celtic Connections programme is that, almost no matter how much music you habitually consume, there’s a chance that you’ll happen across something new. I’d somehow managed previously to miss Jake Smith, aka The White Buffalo, although from the size of Tuesday’s audience and its obviously strong connection with Smith’s personality and music on this, his second appearance in the city, it’s clear that Glasgow has taken him to its heart.
It’s not difficult to hear and see why. Smith has a very distinctive, very lived in voice, and comes across very much as one of the gang, rather than as a star attraction. He doesn’t stand on ceremony or mind his Ps and Qs and his rootsy rock and country is very much of the street, down to earth, punky even.
He’s no newcomer, having produced his first album in 2002, and his stage show speaks of many, many gigs in many, many towns. If the low rumble of his baritone doesn’t always make it easy to decipher his lyrics, what’s abundantly audible is the locked-in rapport he enjoys with his bass guitarist, Chris Hoffee and drummer, Matt Lynott.
Playing acoustic guitar in what will shortly become quite the power trio, he opens with the tender, almost whispered Radio With No Sound, with Hoffee’s waltzing piano accompaniment, before launching into what he himself would possibly call a shitkicking tempo. And so he continues, alternating between the reflective and/or anthemic and the urgent, with Lynott’s livewire status appearing to become literally so in a strobe effect-lit series of fizzing and frankly exhilarating drum breaks.
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