Gig review: Scottish Songwriters In The Round, St Cecilia’s Hall (Venue 31), Edinburgh

By JIM GILCHRIST
Published on 06/08/2012 14:58

THREE Scots singer-songwriters – Simon Kempston, Tom Fairnie and Mark Barnett – host a different guest nightly. It’s an intimate, amiable atmosphere but – somewhat paradoxically for those presumably anxious to express their muses – they too often failed to really project.

Kempston has a distinctively tremulous voice and an accomplished guitar style, as in the busy thrum of his Derry Waltz, but his lyrics are frequently incoherent.

Fairnie, with backing vocals from his wife, Jane, came out with the gently country-ish Wild Geese and a song about Scotland that seemed sincere but was largely confided to the microphone, while Barnett’s song-chronicles of Edinburgh came over clearer with the quirky Giraffe.

Their guest, the beatifically beaming Tynesider Martin Stephenson, of the Daintees fame, stepped up audience engagement by ambling through the hall to deliver his laconic Sad Tale of Joe McCue and the closing Let The Circle Be Unbroken, staying put onstage for his heartfelt Home.

Rating: ***

• Until tomorrow. Today 8:30pm.