Gig review: Newfangled Folk

Published on Sunday 28 March 2010 22:51

THE LOT, EDINBURGH ***

AN in-the-round collaboration between Kim Edgar, David Ferrard and Yvonne Lyon, Newfangled Folk not only gives you three singer-songwriters for the price of one, but expands the arrangements of each performer's material from their customary solo format, with instrumentation including two guitars, piano, fiddle, glockenspiel and djembe, plus a wealth of lovely backing harmonies.

Their chosen collective moniker reflects the show's primary emphasis on original material, but also the trio's conscious kinship to the folk ballad tradition, particularly in their shared propensity for strongly melodic, narrative-driven songs.

The melodies in Edgar's case were often delicately off-kilter, combining with her subtly astringent vocals to lend a touch of angsty dissonance to thematically ambitious numbers like The Ornate Lie, inveighing against the constraints of conventional femininity, and Blood, Ice and Ashes, a co-write with Karine Polwart, described as a feminist murder ballad-cum-revenge fantasy.

Most of Lyon's compositions arose directly from personal experience, as with the unexpected epiphany described in Everything's Fine, or the moving tenderness of Fourteen Weeks, inspired by an ultrasound photo of her niece-to-be.

Ferrard's writing, be it in the protest-song vein of Wild Flowers or the meditative parable My Father's House, was the most pedestrian of the three, despite its palpable sincerity, but the package as a whole made for an enjoyably absorbing night.