Review: Rebecca Pronsky/Dean Owens - City Halls, Glasgow

BOTH of the performers at this Americana showcase paid lip service to the old Elton John adage that sad songs say so much without managing to tap into a deeper melancholy in their own music.

Edinburgh-based Dean Owens reckons there is more to life than enjoying yourself, but stripped of his fuller band arrangements his songs tended to fall into a samey country pop pattern, which made him easy but unstimulating company. A couple of Johnny Cash numbers were dispatched in the manner of a practised open-mic participant. Ironically, his best moment was also his most upbeat, an instantly toe-tapping, unamplified set-closer.

Brooklyn’s Rebecca Pronsky is happy to admit she is a country music interloper, bringing her jazz bar background to bear on her songwriting. Like Owens, she claims to be sparring with jollity in her songs while projecting an innately cheerful personality, always ready to share some disposable touring anecdote.

She was accompanied by her cool, Brylcreemed guitarist Rich Bennet, who sent nicely judged ripples of electric twang and even some sonorous distortion through her material. There were mediocre moments – her accidental protest song Rise Up is blandly non-specific, while her recession number Hard Times would crumble next to the Gillian Welch song of the same name – but she varied the tone with the bluesy Shame and the lounge jazz of Fragile World.

She kept one song in her back pocket calculated to endear her to the Scots. Aberdeen did the job, not because of its title but for its light freewheeling style, lovely natural chord changes and sweet, easy melody, while it was hardly a chore to warm to Pronsky herself.

RATING: ***