Red Guitar Music

News, reviews and more

  • Home
  • News
  • Album Reviews
  • Live Reviews
  • Features
    • The Baker's Dozen
    • Inside The Song
  • Interviews
  • Tour News
  • Contact
Karine Polwart - Scottish Songbook Artwork small.jpg

Karine Polwart's Scottish Songbook (Album Review)

July 29, 2019 by Rich Barnard in Album Reviews, Folk, Pop, Singer-Songwriter

You probably never noticed, but a lot of the pop music you grew up on was born in Scotland. You can’t have been raised in the 80s without escaping Simple Minds; in the 90s without strumming along to Del Amitri, or in the noughties without tapping your toes to KT Tunstall.  And now, multi-award-winning folk singer-songwriter Karine Polwart has drawn on these decades, among others, to bring you her latest release: Scottish Songbook.  This celebration of the history of Scot-pop began when Karine gathered two dozen songs together for a live show she took to the 2018 Edinburgh Festival.  A year on, eleven of those songs coalesce on an album that is reverent, revealing and - above all - rewarding.

It’s a credit to Polwart that she has shied away from too many obvious choices - Texas, The Proclaimers and Eddi Reader (along with everyone I mentioned in the opening paragraph) are all absent here, though their hits would make rich pickings for a cash-in cover artist.  Thankfully, this musician’s ambitions are far nobler than to be featured on the next John Lewis commercial.  Each track has been selected for its resonance with Polwart and, more importantly, for its relevance - as she sees it - to the here and now. 

Polwart Dignity.jpeg

The biggest hitters, Deacon Blue’s ‘Dignity’ and The Waterboys’ ‘Whole Of The Moon’, are songs so dear to so many that re-working them is a precarious business.  Polwart has walked this wire with particular skill, taking a fresh and innovative approach with both arrangements while carefully retaining the essence of each song.  The opening tuned percussion of ‘Whole Of The Moon’ is a translation of a violin riff from the original; its cascading effect forming a new hook on which to hang the song.  Similarly, ‘Dignity’s vocal intro playfully borrows from another of Deacon Blue’s significant hits ‘Real Gone Kid’ to create an unfamiliar backdrop for the tear-making tale of the humble man who wishes to one day sail away.

And so, transformation after transformation ensues.  The plaintive charge of Big Country’s ‘Chance’ is rendered solemn and still; John Martyn’s trademark spaciness is turned into something altogether more intense with the sultry, slow-burning of ‘Don’t Want To Know’ while, coming closer to the present, the fantastic 2013 Chvrches hit ‘The Mother We Share’ is deftly de-synthed for a wider, more organic audience.

Buy on Amazon

Some of the tracks here have been torn - but in a sense rescued - from their own place in time by Polwart’s re-dressings.  The best example is the slow sadness she’s injected into the hitherto pop thinness of Strawberry Switchblade’s ‘Since Yesterday’.  Likewise, The Blue Nile’s ‘From Rags To Riches’ is carefully freed from its 1984 experimental clankings, revealing a naturally yearning song that feels equally at home, cradled in Polwart’s simple tuned percussion, acoustic guitar, piano and accordion, while the gathering drums nod to the sampled sounds of the original.  In their first incarnations both of these pieces sound dated in a way that is hard to get past but these new versions lay the songs’ spirits wide open.  In this sense, it is Polwart’s ability to hear beyond the constraints of period style to find the heart of the song beneath that makes this record feel like an exciting voyage of discovery.

Elsewhere, the simple piano/vocal of Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Whatever’s Written In Your Heart’ serves as a kind of manifesto for the entire project: “whatever’s written in your heart, that’s all that matters” goes the lyric, inviting the listener to take from these songs what they will.  Most arresting and powerful of all, though, is Polwart’s take on Ivor Cutler’s ‘Women of The World’ - a rallying cry for environmental and societal change if ever there was one - which closes the record.

For deeper insights than this review can offer, I’d strongly recommend Karine Polwart’s enlightening blog, https://medium.com/@blog.kpolwart where she appends fresh meaning to these chunks of musical history, showing how they can relate to our present.  This companion piece to the record only enhances the listening experience further and makes the project a significant achievement - part archive, part timely social comment and wholly enjoyable.  Alongside her established reputation as a singer-songwriter and writer, Scottish Songbook now puts Karine Polwart on the map as a valuable musical interpreter and curator too and I wonder if this could be the first of many such volumes.  I live in hope that it will be.

Review by Rich Barnard.

I’d you’d like to know more about the original inspiration for Scottish Songbook:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/15/karine-polwart-scottish-songbook-edinburgh-festival-pop-folk-big-country-cocteau-twins

Karine Polwart will be playing a short run of shows later this year.

November 2019 Tour Dates:
14 November ABERDEEN Music Hall
15 November PERTH Concert Hall
16 November EDINBURGH Usher Hall
27 November LONDON

Featured reviews @RGM
The Happy Couple - Lullaby of Broadland
Dec 2, 2024
The Happy Couple - Lullaby of Broadland
Dec 2, 2024

One of the positive aspects of running Red Guitar Music is that you encounter all manner of different musical genres that you wouldn’t necessarily find on your own. The RGM Inbox is positively overflowing with the good, the bad and, yes, the ugly (although something we find unlistenable is probably the best thing in the world to someone). One example that falls squarely in the good category of pleasant surprises is The Happy Couple, discovered on a recent visit to London’s Green Note, where the duo opened for Dimple Discs labelmate Kelsey Michael.

Read More →
Dec 2, 2024
Molly Murphy - Tigers In Your Backyard (Nocturnal Edition)
Sep 12, 2024
Molly Murphy - Tigers In Your Backyard (Nocturnal Edition)
Sep 12, 2024

A new name to me, but based on the new EP, ‘Tigers in Your Backyard (Nocturnal Edition)’, Molly Murphy is one to watch. Initially, Molly embarked on a promising college career as a double Film and English Major pursuing a career in screenwriting but left all that behind to form a band (as you do). Murphy’s latest release finds the singer-songwriter adding a modern sheen to her traditional Celtic roots.

Read More →
Sep 12, 2024
Scott Matthews - Restless Lullabies (Album Review)
Apr 28, 2023
Scott Matthews - Restless Lullabies (Album Review)
Apr 28, 2023

For bands and singer-songwriters, 2020 was hardly the best year to release a new album.  And let’s face it, 2021 wasn’t much better.  The only hope for artists with new music was that they could somehow connect online, as reaching fans via physical touring was out of the question.  As a result, countless records were overlooked, under-noticed and sailed away, unloved.  Scott Matthews released his eighth album, the sonically ambitious New Skin, in December 2020, at the start of a winter most of us are keen to forget.  Three years later, Restless Lullabies sees the same set of songs reborn, and, in an effort to ensure that each are properly heard, they have been stripped of skin, flesh and - in some cases - their very bones, in his most exposed and intimate record to date. 

Read More →
Apr 28, 2023
Miriam Jones - Reach For The Morning (Album Review)
Aug 16, 2022
Miriam Jones - Reach For The Morning (Album Review)
Aug 16, 2022

Back in 2015, Miriam Jones was treading the well-worn path of the folky singer/songwriter. Her Simon Edwards (Fairground Attraction) produced album ‘Between Green and Gone' was acoustic-based but recorded with a full band and received radio support from Bob Harris and Robert Elms. An impressive record, it looked like we would be seeing a lot of Miriam but the Canadian native slipped off the radar (well, my radar anyway) until recently when she reappeared with new music that showed a marked evolution in her sound.

Read More →
Aug 16, 2022
Maple Leaf Christmas Special: EP Reviews
Nov 29, 2021
Maple Leaf Christmas Special: EP Reviews
Nov 29, 2021

This is the time of year when I’m regularly called upon to make donations to the Scrooge Jar. Every time I say something even vaguely negative about the festive season (which I confess is quite often) I am swiftly rebuked by the rest of the family and duly relieved of a few more pennies. So, I am possibly not the best suited to reviewing a pair of Christmas-themed EPs, but these new releases from two of my favourite Canadian singer-songwriters have, I confess, begun to thaw my miserly, humbug-riddled heart.

Read More →
Nov 29, 2021
Michael McGovern - Highfield Suite (Album Review)
Jul 13, 2021
Michael McGovern - Highfield Suite (Album Review)
Jul 13, 2021

Michael McGovern’s debut album ‘Highfield Suite’ is a short but sweet introduction to the talents of the Glasgow singer/songwriter and guitarist who, at 25, seemingly has an old head on a pair of surprisingly young shoulders. Inspired at an early age by the usual suspects (Dylan, Cohen, Simon, Fleet Foxes) McGovern began writing songs while still in his teens and with the forced isolation of 2020, the time was right to embark on his debut record. McGovern commenced recording with one microphone in a small wooden cabin in Galway before enlisting Bill Shanley to co-produce. The pair subtly expanding McGovern’s intricate nylon-strung fingerpicked guitar sound into full band arrangements with the addition of a rhythm section, piano, an unexpected dash of saxophone, a smattering of pedal steel and some very pleasing vocal harmonies.

Read More →
Jul 13, 2021
John Hinshelwood - Called Back (the poems of Emily Dickinson) (Album Review)
Jun 9, 2021
John Hinshelwood - Called Back (the poems of Emily Dickinson) (Album Review)
Jun 9, 2021

For his sixth solo release Scottish singer and songwriter John Hinshelwood has taken a different approach to his craft inspired by the poems of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). The reclusive Dickinson, who wrote almost 1800 poems during her lifetime, conducted most of her correspondence with the outside world via letter, especially after she retreated to her bedroom in later life. The sheer volume of Dickinson’s work was not discovered until after her death and she is now considered one of the finest American poets of her generation. John Hinshelwood readily admits that his connection to Dickinson was initially limited to a mention of her in a Paul Simon song, but the purchase of a volume of ‘Selected Poems’ would spark an interest that would become an obsession (in a good way).

Read More →
Jun 9, 2021
M G Boulter - Clifftown (Album Review)
Apr 21, 2021
M G Boulter - Clifftown (Album Review)
Apr 21, 2021

As concepts for albums go, faded Essex seaside towns might not be the most likely choice but singer-songwriter M G Boulter has carefully hewn a hugely affecting set of songs from the rocks of Clifftown, a pseudonym for his beloved Southend-on-Sea. For those new to the name, Boulter has been making solo records since 2013, having cut his teeth in various bands and he’s now signed to the independent label Hudson Records, alongside Karine Polwart, Bellowhead and Jenny Sturgeon. With a vocal that is as vulnerable as Neil Young but as English as Nick Drake, M G Boulter has concentrated the promise of his first two records into an extremely accomplished third that marries his poetic lyrics with intricate (but unshowy) guitar playing.

Read More →
Apr 21, 2021
Liz Simmons - Poets (Album Review)
Apr 16, 2021
Liz Simmons - Poets (Album Review)
Apr 16, 2021

I’m not entirely sure what it is about the best folk/roots music, but it seems to me to get it right you need experience. By experience, I don't just mean being able to play really well, as I consider that a given, it’s more about an appreciation for what has come before, and possibly the most important thing of all, is an experience of life in general. In the sleeve notes to ‘Poets’ Liz Simmons thanks her parents for the itinerant lifestyle of her early years travelling the length and breadth of America in a sky blue VW bus. From the wharfs of San Francisco to the pubs of Ketchum, Alaska before settling in New England Simmons’ early life was a whirlwind of travel and music; be it folk, rock n’ roll or the New Orleans influenced tunes her parents played nightly in the pub.

Read More →
Apr 16, 2021
Amigo The Devil - Born Against (Album Review)
Apr 14, 2021
Amigo The Devil - Born Against (Album Review)
Apr 14, 2021

2018’s ‘Everything Is Fine’ was one of that year's finest releases and marked Danny Kiranos aka Amigo The Devil as one to watch. ‘Everything Is Fine' is a terrific record full of dark imagery unhindered by genre stereotypes. It might not be quite everyone’s cup of tea but if you like a good murder ballad delivered by a heavily bearded man with a banjo then ‘Everything Is Fine’ could well become your go-to album. As it turned out the album only told half the story as the RGM team found on our last but one pre lockdown night out in February of 2020. The Amigo The Devil live experience is something else entirely, ‘Everything Is Fine’ is a fantastic record but put ATD on a stage and the results are very special. In forty years of gig-going, I’ve rarely seen an artist connect with an audience in the same way as ATD. The subject matter might often be jet black but ATD is not without humour and his followers appreciate the honesty within and can relate to his grasp of the daily problems we all face, and how we deal with those problems that have, in many cases, been exaggerated by the world around us in 2021.

Read More →
Apr 14, 2021
Declan O'Rourke - Arrivals (Album Review)
Apr 6, 2021
Declan O'Rourke - Arrivals (Album Review)
Apr 6, 2021

Declan O’Rourke’s new record, Arrivals, is an exercise in less-is-more. For his seventh LP (and his first for eastwest), the celebrated Irish 44-year-old has Paul Weller in the production chair and though the songs are stripped to their bones, they want not for richness or depth.

Read More →
Apr 6, 2021
Sara Watkins - Under The Pepper Tree (Album Review)
Mar 26, 2021
Sara Watkins - Under The Pepper Tree (Album Review)
Mar 26, 2021

As a ground-down and curmudgeonly father of two, I am possibly not the best person to be reviewing Sara Watkins’ new children’s album. Children’s album. To me, it’s a chilling pairing of words. Having endured eight long years of inane toddler CDs on perpetual repeat, I like to think that this particular hell-genre has in some way contributed to my frankly harrowing mental and physical decline. I put it to you that children’s music is just one of the many unpleasant forms of torture visited upon unsuspecting parents the world over and therefore ought not to be encouraged.

Read More →
Mar 26, 2021
July 29, 2019 /Rich Barnard
Karine Polwart, Deacon Blue, Waterboys, John Martyn, Big Country
Album Reviews, Folk, Pop, Singer-Songwriter
  • Newer
  • Older
News RSS
Album Reviews RSS
Live Reviews RSS
Foreign Music CDJapan

Red Guitar Music is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.co.uk and affiliated sites.

Powered by Squarespace