Review: Eilidh Steel & Mark Neal, Leith folk club

Published on Thursday 18 February 2010 09:02

Eilidh Steel & Mark Neal ** Leith folk club

ESPECIALLY at a professional level, today's Scottish folk scene is a highly exacting arena in which to ply your trade.

Prevailing standards have risen so far over the last decade or so that outstanding musicianship is only the first, basic requirement for any aspiring concert act.

Given the sheer numbers of musicians nowadays jockeying for position, some element of artistic or stylistic distinction, or originality, is also increasingly necessary to stand out.

Judged by their performance here, the partnership of Helensburgh-born fiddler Eilidh Steel and East Kilbride guitarist/singer Mark Neal falls well short on both fronts.

In the instrumental sets, Steel's playing delivered plenty of attack and intricate ornamentation, but tended to sacrifice accuracy for speed.

Her forceful bowing yielded little in the way of expressive nuance or dynamic variety.

Neal's guitar work, too, largely displayed more enthusiasm than finesse. His languid, often wavery singing was the weakest element of all, exacerbated not only by a mostly hackneyed choice of covers, but the sole original composition he performed, The Lonely Whaler.

Of all the subjects available to a 21st-century songwriter, Greenland whaling seems a bizarrely anachronistic choice.

The selection of tunes, by contrast, highlighted Steel's considerable abilities as a composer, but the rest of the duo's act needs sharpening up.