Gig review: Live At The Star

Published on Friday 2 October 2009 20:39

ST ANDREWS IN THE SQUARE, GLASGOW ****

A MEMBER of the celebrated Co Down singing clan who performed as the Sands Family during the 1970s and 80s, Colum Sands plies his solo trade primarily as a storyteller – albeit many of those stories are written into his songs. As is his wont, he spent as much time talking as singing on his latest Glasgow visit, addressing his audience like old friends, unhurriedly interweaving childhood memories and diverse anecdotes from his much-travelled career with digressive observational asides, to equally comic and insightful effect.

Musically, his approach is quietly understated and unassuming, framing his narratives in traditional-style ballad idioms, delivered with a gentle diffidence that steers between conversation and introspection.

There's a deceptive density to many of the songs that result – as with Fred Jordan's Boots, for instance, which compressed the tale of an unexpected encounter in New Zealand, a tribute to a departed English folk singer, a passing reflection on war and a celebration of traditional music's ongoing evolution, all into a few soft-spoken minutes. Going to the Well With Maggie and The Man with the Cap both commemorated characters from Sands' rural boyhood, at once conjuring them and honouring the older ways their lives enshrined. The latter song, too, not only contained the wonderfully potent refrain, "No-one has a photo of this man", but largely rectified that with the lyrics' vivid portrayal. Occasionally Sands's detailed explanatory preambles, richly absorbing though they were, rendered the ensuing songs slightly repetitious, but an evening in his company was nonetheless a rare pleasure.