Gig review: Ivan Drever - The Village, Leith

ORCADIAN singer-songwriter Ivan Drever is still perhaps most widely known as the original lead singer of Highland folk-rockers Wolfstone; subsequently for his partnership with said band’s fiddler Duncan Chisholm; and latterly as proud Dad to contemporary folk star Kris Drever, of both Lau and solo fame. Drever père, however, has also ploughed a long solo furrow, with new album Bless the Wind being his tenth in 20-odd years.

Rich in his native accents, both literally and by frequent reference to Orkney’s place-names, local characters, weather and unspoilt beauties, Drever’s set here highlighted the extensive stylistic territory he shares with fellow Scottish troubadour Dougie MacLean – for both good and ill. Both are blessed with seductively lovely voices, Drever’s of a darker, bassier hue, though these roomy, woody depths shade resonantly into warmer, lyrical tones. Both have an uncommon knack for a winsome tune, in Drever’s case frequently pitched somewhere between early Paul Simon and early Dylan. Both, however, frequently fail to develop those melodies beyond a few core phrases, and are overly reliant on somewhat generic communing-with-nature imagery, such that Drever’s almost entirely slow-paced songs increasingly blended into one another as the set went on. Half a dozen fine guitar instrumentals, mostly self-penned, provided some welcome variety, but covers of John Prine’s Speed of the Sound of Loneliness and Tom Paxton’s Last Thing On My Mind further showed up the limitations of Drever’s songwriting.

Rating: ***