As Ewan McLennan noted before signing off with a song by a man from nearby Calton, Matt McGinn's Miner's Lullaby, he was given a warm reception from his Glasgow audience considering he's from Edinburgh.
The folk music community, being more of the "we're a' Jock Tamson's bairns" persuasion, is more forgiving of such details and while McLennan's disclosure took a few by surprise, he's clearly become a popular visitor to the Star Folk Club.
This was singer-guitarist McLennan's first appearance at the new basement venue, a more intimate, compact space than its previous home, and while his voice, with its often heavy vibrato, can sound nervous and won't be to everyone's taste, he has an assured presence and strong convictions behind his material.
Dundee mill worker and one-person awkward squad Mary Brooksbank's Oh Dear Me established his principles early and in among lighter, singalong items including Jock Stewart and I'm a Rover, he expressed firmly held sympathies for Spanish civil war veterans, Chilean miners and the Afghan war hero-turned-conscientious objector, Joe Glenton.
McClennan is an accomplished guitarist, best illustrated by his reading of Jer the Rigger, and he couches each song in carefully conceived accompaniments. There were one or two uncomfortable passages in terms of narrative pacing, notably on a functional Arthur McBride, and the classic American murder ballad Delia could do with more of the dramatic tension that Eric Taylor used to bring to it, but McLennan underlined the promise shown on his two albums so far.
HHH
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