Edinburgh Fringe cabaret and music reviews: La Clique | Camille O’Sullivan | Ali and the Vagabond Jacks | BirdWorld | Orchestra of Sound

Two legends of Fringe cabaret, the ravishing La Clique and divine diva Camille O’Sullivan, continue to deliver the goods while Ali and the Vagabond Jacks bring New Orleans to Marchmont

Camille O'Sullivan | Contributed

CABARET

La Clique ★★★★

Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows (Venue 360) until 24 August

MUSIC

Camille O’Sullivan: Loveletter ★★★★

Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) until 17 August

The alternative circus cabaret spectacular La Clique first detonated on the Fringe twenty years ago, sending trapezes and tassels flying. Now it’s a veteran dependable pair of hands, sure to deliver top drawer athleticism, ravishing grace and silly, slightly shocking burlesque comedy under the velvety awnings of the glorious Spiegeltent.

Heading this year’s charge, Tuedon Amy Ariri, who might actually have a brass neck, displays strength and grace in equal measure in her opening hybrid bathtub/aerial routine to the sultry soundtrack of Lilac Wine. David Pereira exhibits balletic poise and gymnastic strength on the silks while the stagehands execute their own role with ninja-like precision.

Ebullient tap dancer Bayley Graham takes his rhythmic repertoire to its percussive conclusion by deconstructing a drum kit, juggler Florian Brooks opens with a fishy routine then throws fluid geometric shapes with clubs and sassy sword swallower Heather Holliday returns with her extraordinary lubricated larynx. The fabulous creature that is LJ Marles gets in a right arty fankle on the elastic straps while Tara Boom reveals herself as a woman of many multi-tasking talents. One might pine for the longterm absence of any musical acts but if you want to see popcorn and shaving foam deployed in creative ways, La Clique is still the only show in town.

Camille O’Sullivan also marks twenty years on the Fringe which began with one of said musical interludes at La Clique. There is also now a familiarity about her unpredictability as a performer, presenting as a hot mess but really exhibiting remarkable control over her instrument, from husky whisper to full-throated warcry.

For some time now, O’Sullivan has been wallowing in most ravishing fashion in the repertoire of dearly departed artists. The ghosts of Cohen and Bowie are invoked in her latest show, Loveletter, but this time it’s personal – two of her friends are the main recipients of said longing missive and she can be forgiven for reminiscing at some length about Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan and Sinead O’Connor, who have both passed in the past year. Their deaths unleashes cathartic waves of grief among their fanbase and O’Sullivan harnesses and seconds that emotion with a ragged glory.

MacGowan is rather more represented than O’Connor with an increasingly raucous take on The Broad Majestic Shannon and the utter urban romance of A Rainy Night In Soho but her rendition of O’Connor’s This Is To Mother You is exquisite and there is an additional treat when her trusty pianist Feargal Murray, providing apocalyptic accompaniment on her version of Radiohead’s Paranoid Android among other instrumental highlights, duets with her on the Pogues/O’Connor hit Haunted.

Elsewhere, she pulls off a wonderfully unhinged hula hooping rock performance of Nick Cave’s Jubilee Street before administering a final dose of healing balm with her signature version of The Ship Song. An encore singalong to Fairytale of New York doesn’t quite come off. Despite her approachability, who among us mere mortals would attempt to duet with this divine diva?

Fiona Shepherd

MUSIC

Ali and the Vagabond Jacks: Hot Roots Jazz, Highway Honkytonk, Rags and Blues ★★★★

Argyle Cellar Bar (Venue 293) until 16 August

Once again, a modest corner of leafy Marchmont becomes an ersatz New Orleans speakeasy as early jazz specialist Ali Affleck curates a series of concerts in this cosy space. The Vagabond Jacks, however are a quartet of very able trad practitioners from the US, Australia and Scotland, led by trumpeter, occasional singer and MC Mike Summers, with clarinettist Jonathan Greene, guitarist Timmy Allan and Simon Toner on double bass (Affleck herself sticks to rhythm washboard for this particular gig).

As the show’s title suggests, they range zestily through old-time New Orleans repertoire, opening with the familiar lazy swagger of W C Handy’s St Louis Blues, clarinet lacing sinuously around the full-toned trumpet line. Their irresistibly upbeat programme continues with the gospel-infused Over in the Glory Land, with cursory singing from Summers and zealous handclapping from the audience, before cruising on through such gems as the Jelly Roll Morton’s Tin Roof Blues, which slopes along, lazily and lushly, trumpet and clarinet stepping out neatly together and featuring a well-considered guitar solo from Allan.

Other classics include the 12-bar exuberance of the Oliver- Armstrong favourite Dippermouth Blues, Summers’s mute trumpet wah-wahing mournfully. Then there’s the old Don Redmond number Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You, upon which Summers is moved to observe that some of these old jazz songs don’t always come over as very PC these days, prompting Affleck to chip in from behind her washboard, “Passive aggressive love song!”

Passive-aggressive or not, it sashayed on its way with louche relish, before the band closed, literally on a high note, with Panama Rag.

Jim Gilchrist

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MUSIC

BirdWorld – Nurture ★★★

Summerhall (TechCube0) (Venue 26) until 11 August

BirdWorld, a trio of cellist Gregor Riddell , percussionist Adam Texeira and bass-guitarist Michele Tacchi, offer what they describe as a seamless 35-minute journey featuring “alternative, electronic, Afro-Cuban and classical music alongside a flux of field recordings spanning industrial and natural landscape”.

Field recording-wise there doesn’t seem overmuch of the woodnotes wild, although Riddell’s cello opens sweetly with a richly-toned, pastoral sounding phrases (shades, almost, of Vaughan Williams) to which he returns from time to time while also plucking and strumming the instrument, as bass and drums unhurriedly work up quite a groove, bass guitar sighing and muttering over hissing cymbals with interludes of looping, gamelan-like chimes and other discreet electronica. Riddell switches to piano at one point, his keyboard work cascading over rumbling drums as the bass guitar carries on the narrative.

The overall impression is of a thoughtful, at times highly engaging, piece of work, but it really needs something more to make us sit up, particularly given a distinctly anti-climactic conclusion, in which Riddell produces an acoustic guitar and accompanies himself while intoning a half-hearted sounding, disconsolately bluesy song.

Jim Gilchrist

MUSIC

Orchestra of Sound ★★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 24 August

Paul Snider describes himself as a “sound miner”. Many musicians may use sampled “found sound”, but with Snider it is a compulsion. “There are resonating bodies all around us,” he remarks, wheeling onstage the stripped-down keyboard he plays for much of the performance. And who can doubt him as a constant stream of background videos depict him hammering the living daylights out of everything from an airliner fuselage to shed roofs, upturned canoes and wine glasses, their accumulated sounds orchestrated ingeniously into melodies.

He’s also accompanied onscreen by himself and other musicians playing assorted eccentric instruments – pitchfork guitar, dustbin cello, saxophone from a bicycle frame. Some sequences have themes, such as The Next Generation, which, with its newsreel footage of devastated cities and military cemeteries, makes its point as he coaxes melancholy tones out of a musical saw.

It’s all entertaining and intriguing, although it can be hard to shed the impression of ingenious gimmickry. The multi-media show’s live performance quotient is confined to Snider on keyboard and one or two other curiosities, with the main action on screen. His inventive energy is impressive, however. Just don’t let him near your dustbin.

Jim Gilchrist