Music review: Camille O'Sullivan: Where Are We Now? | Mikelangelo: Cave-Waits-Cohen | My Leonard Cohen

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: It goes without saying that we have lost some almighty musical icons over the last two years and the desire to clutch their songs to the collective bosom is strong.

Camille O'Sullivan celebrates her heroes and excels again.

Camille O’Sullivan: Where Are We Now?

Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows (Venue 360)

****

Mikelangelo: Cave-Waits-Cohen

Assembly Checkpoint (Venue 322)

***

My Leonard Cohen

Assembly Rooms (Venue 20)

**

The brilliant Fringe diva Camille O’Sullivan cannot contain the cathartic impulse to celebrate her heroes and she excels yet again this year in a darker, more downbeat but utterly spellbinding show spurred by the passing of David Bowie and Leonard Cohen.

Both are present in sampled form and as channelled by O’Sullivan, whose dynamic, dramatic interpretations of their songs are at glorious odds with modern pop expression, as her voice vaults from a vulnerable whisper to a throaty scream and she wrangles expression out of every note.

She taps into the woozy, funereal quality of two brilliant later Bowie tracks, Blackstar and Where Are We Now, splicing them together into nothing so cheesy as a medley.

The martial drums and guitar heroics of Nick Cave’s Mercy Seat is a staple of her set, now joined by Declan O’Rourke’s ravishing Galileo, the most romantic song you will ever hear, guaranteed. And if you ask nicely, there is a special encore of Cohen’s Suzanne sung partly in French.

O’Sullivan reaches the parts other Cohen tributes cannot, even though her La Clique alumnus Mikelangelo possesses a brooding baritone ideally suited to this material and conveys the timeless quality in the writing of Cohen, Cave and Tom Waits as much as its significance for him in his formative years.

The suave, testifying crooner strolls casually through the door of the venue, whistling his way to the stage, then leads us back out that door an hour later to serenade his audience on the street. In the interim, he delivers Tower of Song as a measured strut, The Ship Song as a sea shanty and Goin’ Out West with some cabaret karate. Cave’s sinister Red Right Hand is accidentally accompanied by the screech of passing police sirens. “Perfect,” he purrs.

Fellow Australian Stewart D’Arrietta has already toured his own tribute to Waits but now gives Cohen the covers treatment with full muso backing from a band of Scottish musicians including drummer Tom Bancroft and accordionist Phil Alexander, responsible for some of the more understated moments in the show.

My Leonard Cohen will not be everybody’s Leonard Cohen. D’Arrietta’s loud, brash verging-on-pub-rock interpretations of his subtle, lugubrious numbers completely miss their melancholy.

Fortunately, he dials down the delivery on Suzanne, offers a tango take on First We Take Manhattan and infuses Sisters of Mercy with Celtic flavour before bludgeoning a completely overblown Hallelujah.

Camille O’Sullivan: Where Are We Now? until 26 August. Today 7:45pm.

Mikelangelo: Cave-Waits-Cohen until 28 August. Today 6pm.

My Leonard Cohen until 27 August. Today 7:45pm.