Gig review: The Simon Felice Group, Glasgow Oran Mor

It’s difficult to imagine a more profound prompt for creativity than surviving your second near-death experience (from a previously undetected congenital heart defect), a month before welcoming your first child into the world.

Such were the circumstances, back in 2010, in which Simone Felice – formerly of cult alt.country/folk heroes the Felice Brothers and The Duke & the King – embarked on writing his self-titled debut solo album, released earlier this month.

All these facts being prominently on record, it was hard to avoid a lump in the throat when he launched here into the air-punchingly joyful You and I Belong, written on the day his daughter was born; or to mistake the compelling, bone-deep intensity of purpose that united his arrestingly diverse new material.

With Felice’s grainy, sinewy vocals and taut guitar work richly supplemented by his accompanying quartet, on fiddle, lap steel, mandolin, piano, 12-string guitar, drums and vibrant four-part backing vocals, the songs ranged from the aptly bittersweet Summer Morning Rain to the wearily stripped down but vividly evocative Charade; from the volatile drama of Stormy Eyed Sarah to the febrile country/funk of Shaky.

A few Felice Brothers favourites rounded out the set, culminating in an exultant, tour-de-force rendition of Radio Song, before a heartwarming singalong encore of Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

Rating: ****