Karine Polwart’s Scottish Songbook
Leith Theatre
Graeme Thomson
Five stars
AT THE National Museum in Edinburgh’s Old Town, half a century of Scottish pop history is currently braving the curatorial gaze in the Rip It Up exhibition. A couple of miles north, folk artist, actress, writer and all-in creative whirlwind Karine Polwart brought much the same raw material to life in a mighty celebration which bounced between giddy veneration and daring reinvention.
“You can make a folk song out of anything,” Polwart commented after an intense deconstruction of Biffy Clyro’s Machines. In fact, the show travelled far beyond her home turf, roaming from Big Country to the Blue Nile, Chvrches to Ivor Cutler, encompassing pop, punk and indie abrasiveness, with a daft pop quiz thrown in for good measure. Accompanied by a superb five-piece band, Polwart proved as comfortable twirling around – “elbows out!” she commanded – to Altered Images’s I Could Be Happy as teasing out the gorgeous glumness of Strawberry Switchblade’s Since Yesterday or the woozy atmospherics of John Martyn’s Don’t Want to Know.
Throughout, she wore her love for these songs like a smile. Polwart’s busy hands conducted the flow, as though working twine, pulling the disparate threads into focus. An ingenious medley of Here Comes the Rain Again and Smalltown Boy was revelatory. Ivor Cutler’s Women of The World rose and fell like sea-swell, a wonky, welcome call to arms. Crooned by Admiral Fallow’s Louis Abbott, the plangent downscaling of Party Fears Two suggested Scott Walker singing Brel. Later, Frightened Rabbit’s Swim Until You Can’t See Land landed like a gut-punch.
The set peaked with a raucous mash-up of Movin’ On Up and KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and The Cherry Tree, Polwart and company roaring the folk gospel. A studio album based on this EIF show is forthcoming, but this was a night which bears repeating. Same time next year?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here