Review: Amy Macdonald, The Caves

SHE may have charted at No1 in six different countries and sold more than four million albums but, for all her success, Amy Macdonald remains remarkably down to earth.*****

Sure, the nation’s red tops reported yesterday that the Bishopbriggs girl had splashed the cash on a £170,000 Ferrari, but don’t be fooled into thinking this means she’s now adopted the flashy ‘bling-bling’ image favoured by many of today’s pop stars.

Since bursting on to the scene in 2007, Macdonald has remained the regular, girl-next-door-type; her five charity gigs in a day for the STV Appeal - a marathon feat undertaken to raise money for Scotland’s most vulnerable children - showing that she has a bigger heart than most of her chart rivals.

And it’s maybe just as well the 24-year-old had the 202mph Italian supercar to call on, for yesterday she raced across the country giving performances in no fewer than five cities - Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

By the time she hit The Caves for the penultimate show, 12 hours after kicking things off in Aberdeen at 8am, she was understandably “starting to flag a bit”.

No matter, the Scots lass still managed to put on a fantastic show for her fans, each of whom paid a tenner for the privilege - thus doing their bit to help raise money for kids who desperately need it.

Introduced by comedy compere Bruce Devlin, the singer launched into Slow It Down, the first single from brand new album Life In A Beautiful Light, released just this week.

Having started with a newbie, Macdonald took things back to the start by giving an arresting rendition of her very first release, Mr Rock & Roll.

Next up was Love Love, from sophomore effort A Curious Thing - an album that shifted an impressive one-and-a-half million copies on its release.

The fourth number was another new song, Pride.

Since becoming the nation’s favourite pop star, Macdonald has sung Flower Of Scotland to the Tartan Army before several crunch international matches at Hampden Park - and this is a song about the pride she feels about that.

The last song was This Is The Life, the title track from her debut album. Prior to that, Macdonald apologised for the short set, explaining that she had one more show left in order to complete her marathon five charity gigs in one day challenge.

Talk about using your position to help those who are worse off.