Music review: Aidan Moffat and RM Hubbert, Summerhall, Edinburgh

“At least you’re getting a night to remember,” laughed Aidan Moffat with a shake of the head. “’See that last gig they played, it was so f*****’ slick, man’.” He’s mimicking the response of his own audience to this show of he and RM Hubbert’s Here Lies the Body project, as Hubbert tried and failed for the second time to get through the fiddly guitar part in the delicate and warily uplifting song Fringe. “I should know this song by now,” came back Hubbert, deadpan. “I’ve been doing this for quite a long time.”

RM Hubbert and Aidan Moffat

Aidan Moffat and RM Hubbert, Summerhall, Edinburgh ****

It seems unusual that Moffat and Hubbert should be publicly calling a halt to their collaboration after just a year, following one Scottish Album of the Year-nominated album on Mogwai’s Rock Action label, plus a Christmas record and a live album. A pair of bearded, middle-aged men who have been a part of Glasgow’s music scene for two decades and more, their shared air of mock miserabilism is offset by a sharp and in-tune mutual sense of humour, and a perfect balance between the careworn heart of Moffat’s lyrics and Hubbert’s delicate and typically virtuosic (Fringe aside) acoustic playing.

Their set rolled through faded seaside glamour to a background of arcade sounds and Moffat’s disembodied voice through his second mic on Zoltar Speaks; the life-affirming She Runs, driven by the pulsing heartbeat of David Jeans’ drums and Jenny Reeve’s sustained violin notes; and the specially-written finale song Cut to Black. There was a cover of Yazoo’s Only You and an appearance by saxophonist John Burgess, reprising his role on the record for the first time, playing a part in a quietly triumphant 90 minutes which captured the raw elegia of Moffat and Hubbert’s record. David Pollock