Gig review: I Am Kloot, Edinburgh

AT risk of over-generalising, there’s something about a Liverpudlian accent in song that lends itself to a particularly affecting emotion somewhere in the middle of the gulf between hope and melancholy.

I Am Kloot

Edinburgh Liquid Room

* * * *

It’s certainly what strikes most about the voice of John Bramwell – who’s from Cheshire, which is near enough to give him the vowels – and its position as the finest instrument in I Am Kloot’s impressive repertoire.

In one of those success stories that is a triumph of effort over expectation, the band’s new album has finally yielded their first UK top-ten success a whole 12 years after their debut, a slow-burn route to recognition that their co-producer Guy Garvey will recognise from his own career. Although the show was busy but not sold out, the sense here was of a band on the up, a group of artists who have built a repertoire of real quality and singular style over their career together. The three core members were joined by a trio of multi-instrumentalists, adding texture to, for example, the accordion-led, Gallic-tinged sadness of To the Brink.

From recent singles These Days Are Mine and Hold Back the Night to the perfectly lonely croon of Proof, however, Bramwell and Co richly evoked that time when (as Some Better Day has it) “through the gales of life and laughter… you can’t see what you’re after”. Pared right back to the core trio of Bramwell, bassist Peter Jobson and drummer Andy Hargreaves at the end, they demonstrated an admirable willingness to go with a teasing, forlorn whimper rather than any kind of a bang bar an emotional one.