Midge Ure, Edinburgh review: 'in fine voice'

Midge Ure | Contributed

Midge Ure, Usher Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★

In the same month that a new Band Aid documentary revealed the extent to which Midge Ure marshalled the troops to create the blockbusting charity record Do They Know It’s Christmas?, the Cambuslang kid himself embarked on his Catalogue tour, ranging far and wide through his varied repertoire – though anyone hoping for a seasonal blast of Band Aid or with fingers crossed for some of Slik’s bubblegum oeuvre were to be disappointed.

However, Ure did kick off with the suitably stomping Marching Men by his new wave outfit The Rich Kids before diving into the synth pomp of Ultravox, a band who, like Glaswegian contemporaries Simple Minds, were near fetishistic in their Europhilia. That mega-hit about the Austrian capital was still to come.

Along the way there were salutary reminders that, for all his synth pop credentials, Ure is first and foremost a guitarist, covering Peter Green’s The Supernatural and later revisiting his spell in Thin Lizzy with a rollicking The Boys Are Back In Town.

Ure was in fine voice throughout. He performed, as is his way, as if about to pop a vein but his vocal range and tone were entirely preserved. His rendition of Scott Walker’s No Regrets elicited throaty assent from the crowd as the chorus swelled.

A number of less familiar solo cuts were gathered into a somewhat snoozy acoustic interlude before the pomp and circumstance returned courtesy of Vienna, introduced by a quavery sustained chord before the unalloyed symphonic flourishes kicked in. Visage’s Fade to Grey remains a synth pop club classic and the closing salvo also included an ebullient Love’s Great Adventure and Dancing With Tears In My Eyes, one of a handful of apocalyptic visions which chimed well in the Eighties, before Ure and band encored with the similarly melodramatic intimations of The Voice.