Withered Hand, Glasgow review: 'one of the greatest alt-folkies'

Withered Hand | Ian West

Withered Hand, The Glad Café, Glasgow ★★★★

The Edinburgh-based troubadour Dan Willson, aka Withered Hand, has an unusual backstory. Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, he started writing songs at the late age of 30, on a guitar gifted to him by his wife. Now, 20 years later, he’s recognised by those who know as one of the greatest living alt-folkies.

This intimate solo gig was proof of that. An unassuming, bespectacled figure – in person he resembles an exact three-way split between Mark Radcliffe, Randy Newman and a slimmed-down Newman from Seinfeld – Willson writes literate, funny, introspective and sometimes inscrutable-in-a-good-way songs while singing in a high, fluty voice. The overall effect is bewitching.

He sounds a bit like Neil Young circa On the Beach and John Darnielle from The Mountain Goats; which is to say, he only really sounds like himself.

This is a man in love with melody and language. Every tune sticks, while memorable lyrics abound. How about this, from his la-la-la singalong anthem Religious Songs? “I beat myself off when I sleep on your futon / I walk in the rain with my second-hand suit on.”

Or the opening couplet from Takeaway Food? “All this takeaway food is making me feel unwell / At my funeral let them play Highway to Hell.” Or this, from Horseshoe? “Here I go pigeon-toed to the featherweight fight.”

Willson is not your standard sad man with guitar archetype, he’s far more interesting and unusual than that. Indeed, at this late stage you’d think there could be nothing more to mine from a template more or less created by Bob Dylan back in the early 1960s, but Wilson reminds us that every now and again a few exceptionally talented eccentrics will always manage to make it sound fresh again.