Gig review: Laura Cortese

Published on Wednesday 27 May 2009 19:04

LAURA CORTESE **** THE VILLAGE, LEITH

ORIGINALLY from California, but now based in Boston, singer and fiddler Laura Cortese is a graduate of the latter city's prestigious Berklee College of Music, whose early love-affair with traditional Scottish music – discovered partly through Alan Lomax's classic field recordings – has evolved into a distinctively lo-fi, stripped-down blend of folk and indie styles. Having played Madison Square Garden earlier this month, among the star-studded line-up for Pete Seeger's 90th birthday concert – Cortese being one of the US folk godfather's current accompanists of choice – she performed here with electric guitarist Jefferson Hamer, who also supplied backing vocals.

Plucking or strumming her fiddle as often as she played it with the bow – and singing all the while in either case – she laid vibrant, pulsing grooves beneath a mixture of original songs, contemporary covers and reworked traditional numbers, delivered in a voice that mingled shades of blues, gospel, country, vintage jazz and spiky chick-rock. Hamer's dark, sonorous, scuzzy-edged chords proved a strikingly effective complement, while the duo's deftly aligned vocal harmonies tempered the rock'n'roll muscle with Appalachian-tinged sweetness.

Highlights included a ruefully coquettish version of Night Train to Chelsea, by New England songwriter Michael Tarbox; a splendidly squally, punkish take on the hillbilly rarity Greasy Coat, and her own heart-tugging Cry, a tenderly poignant response to the loss of her father.