Review: Transatlantic Sessions - Clickimin Centre, Lerwick

THERE could hardly be a more appropriate place for Celtic Connections’ flagship Transatlantic Sessions show to include in its annual tour than Shetland, positioned, as the islands are, at a geographic and cultural transatlantic crossroads.

Transatlantic Sessions

Clickimin Centre, Lerwick

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THERE could hardly be a more appropriate place for Celtic Connections’ flagship Transatlantic Sessions show to include in its annual tour than Shetland, positioned, as the islands are, at a geographic and cultural transatlantic crossroads.

Fully 5 per cent of the 20,000 population were in attendance at this long-since sold-out gig. “God’s band,” was Eddi Reader’s succinct summation of the 17-piece line-up, before she thanked Shetland “for making Aly Bain” – the legendary local fiddler being co-musical director of the show, with US dobro maestro Jerry Douglas – then delivered a supremely sexy version of Burns’s Green Grow the Rashes O, and a bittersweet, jazz-tinged cover of Love Is the Way by Ireland’s Declan O’Rourke.

He was also on the bill and up next, displaying his compelling vocal range and brilliantly individual songwriting in the calypso-country-pop of Lightning Bird Wind River Man and the gently meditative Galileo.

Other highlights among many ranged from Wailin’ Jennys singer Ruth Moody’s limpidly lovely pastoral paean The Garden to Douglas’s mesmerising solo dobro workout; from Mavericks frontman Raul Malo’s spine-tingling, Orbison-esque You’re Only Lonely to several ultra-classy yet suitably uproarious instrumental medleys from the stellar “house band”.

Besides the quality and variety of individual numbers, though, what makes the Transatlantic Sessions consistently special is the performers’ evident, often ear-to-ear delight at taking part; the spontaneity that balances the arrangements’ diligent rehearsal, and the uniquely warm, intimate rapport between stage and audience that ensues.

SUE WILSON