Review: Palmstar Poppy: Songs in Search of Love Lost at Sea, Barony Bar (Venue 153)

David Paul Jones’s compositional work for theatre is well known: several shows for Grid Iron, including Those Eyes, That Mouth and Barflies; the haunting music for National Theatre of Scotland’s The Missing. To hear him perform his own intense, mesmerising song cycle is a treat.

Star rating: * * *

The interior of a pub is transformed into smokey, candlelit darkness, a suitably magical location for a richly allegorical story about lost love, and sailing into the dark to search for Wishsong Bay, guided by the singing of sea spirits.

Jones’s rich, dark voice is all sadness and longing, while his fingers ripple out watery rhythms on the piano. This is about emotions, not narrative, an ebb and flow between major and minor exploring the colours of loss and the potential for self-discovery.

The nine songs are so similar in tone that they begin to merge into one another. The immersive environment, indistinct lyrics and abstract imagery mean that it’s easy to lose your place and with it all sense of what you may be steering towards. But even if you don’t know exactly where you are, it’s not an unpleasant place to be.

Susan Mansfield

Until 27 August. Today 3pm.