Gig review: Gillian Welch - Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow

GILLIAN Welch and her partner David Rawlings operate one of the sparest live set-ups you will see beyond the back room of a pub – just two mics and the guitars they carry on stage, plus a banjo in reserve and a tiny, portable chest of drawers from which they selected their picks.

The music is similarly unadorned, wholly acoustic with close, subtle harmonies and a pervasively minor key mood, yet rich in atmosphere, imagination, poetry and imagery and performed with unshowy, intuitive sophistication.

Rawlings is a stop-you-in-your-tracks guitarist. He made his signature Epiphone Olympic sing with his dexterous, lyrical picking, which was underscored lightly by Welch’s banjo dappling on One Morning. His every solo was greeted with cheers yet there was not one whiff of indulgence in his virtuosity.

Likewise, Welch can sing as if she is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders without making a meal of her melancholy. The effect is more hypnotic than depressing. New song The Way It Will Be, described by Rawlings as “a real downer”, was actually a transcendent showcase for their effortless, dreamy harmonising, composed in the languorous spirit of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Even a relatively upbeat number such as I Want to Sing that Rock and Roll had a beseeching quality to its delivery.

Timeless is an overused description, but the delicious blues of Dark Turn of Mind and Rawlings’ acoustic gospel I Hear Them All have such a familiar resonance that it feels like they have been plucked from history, while another newbie, Six White Horses, took us right into the Smoky Mountains with a dynamic display of handslaps and step-dancing from Welch.

RATING: ****