Music review: Barbara Dickson

BARBARA Dickson was quick off the mark with her own review. “I’m not rubbish,” she declared, having issued the caveat that she had the flu and might well be emitting “a few croaks and groans” across the course of this typically eclectic concert, which showcased her versatility as a vocalist as well as her catholic tastes.

Barbara Dickson may have had flu, but that didnt stop her showcasing her abilities or her eclectic musical taste, influences and interpretations

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ****

In the end, there was nothing to worry about – some wee cracks as she navigated the rigours of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s melodic intervals in Another Suitcase in Another Hall but a whole lot of clarity in her exquisite tone, as demonstrated when she opened the show a capella before her band eased in with a prog pop arrangement of Gerry Rafferty’s The Royal Mile.

She exhibited great taste in covering George Harrison’s If I Needed Someone, one of the best unsung Beatles tracks, with her wingman Troy Donockley in his element on 12-string guitar among a many-timbred array of stringed (and other) instruments.

Dickson’s skill as an interpreter and her ear for the right song to get her teeth into is undiminished since her early immersion in the Glasgow and Edinburgh folk scenes, and she has returned with alacrity to her roots in recent years.

Traditional tunes were scattered through her set in a variety of guises, from the relatively upbeat Laird o the Dainty Dounby to the poignant Lady Franklin’s Lament, with surplus-to-requirements smooth AOR backing, and from the harmonium-soaked pagan pop of Corpus Christi Carol to the haunting solo Barbara Allen, while the second half of the show really kicked into gear with the epic Celtic mysticism of King Orfeo, inspiring some Stevie Nicks-style skirt swishing from a delighted Dickson.

She showcased her musical theatre chops with the more dramatic vocal sweep of James Taylor’s Mill Worker and the pivotal Easy Terms from Blood Brothers, while the pulsing pop of January February and the carefree Caravan Song played well to the capacity crowd.

For connoisseurs of her pop career, she revisited another Mike Batt song, Run Like the Wind, written for the Watership Down soundtrack – it’s no Bright Eyes, but what is? – and unveiled a new composition of her own, the bittersweet piano ballad Where Shadows Meet the Light.

But she ended as she began, in tribute to her Paisley buddy Gerry Rafferty, conveying all the grace and power of one of his most beautiful songs, The Ark. Definitely not rubbish.

FIONA SHEPHERD