Gig review: Liane Carroll, Glasgow

LIANE Carroll doesn’t stand on ceremony. Opening night of the Glasgow Jazz Festival and she strolls into this Candleriggs venue from the street, grabs a drink from the bar and weaves her way through the tables to the piano, to kick off with The Nearness of You. She is immediately consumed, heart and soul, by the song, as she is with every subsequent number in this infectiously big-hearted solo show.

No standing on ceremony from Liane Carroll as she wowed the aptly named Wild Cabaret

Liane Carroll - Wild Cabaret, Glasgow

* * * *

An expansively beaming presence behind the mike, she whooped and scatted through the registers, delivered irreverent and self-deprecatory asides, interacting utterly with a delighted audience in this intimate venue.

We got the exuberantly churning stride piano of Fats Waller’s All of Me, the sultry, stalking blues of Nobody’s Fault But Mine, then a full-pelt rendition of Nina Simone’s Sinner Man, piano and audience hand-clapping in hot pursuit. A couple of young singers, Crawford McInally-Kier and Rowan Haslam, respectively, joined her for some high-spirited duetting on Witchcraft and Do It the Hard Way. There was also a manic conflation of her song about Dublin with Gershwin’s Summer Time (The Michael Flatley version, she assured us) and The Sound of Music – all we could do was hang on for the ride.

Most beguiling, however, were an old favourite, Tom Waits’s Take Me Home, the affectionate waltz-time of Joe Stilgoe’s title song from her forthcoming album, Seaside, and Joni Mitchell’s River, the latter combining its inherent wistfulness with the immense warmth which is Carroll’s hallmark.

Seen on 24.06.15