Scotsman critic's choice: Four must-see shows this week

The Scotsman's arts critics round up their must-see theatre, art and concerts for the next week

Teenage Fanclub will play Edinburgh's Liquid Rooms. Picture: Contributed

POP: Teenage Fanclub

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then Teenage Fanclub acolytes will barely be able to contain their affection after a six-year wait for new album, Here, and will be happy to hear the band’s ear for a gorgeous tune has not diminished. Here is charming and disarming business as usual for the group, now divided over two continents, with Norman Blake residing in Canada, while his compadres remain in Glasgow. Fiona Shepherd

• Liquid Room, Edinburgh, 6 September, 0131-225 2564

ART: Jennifer West: Flashlight Film Strip Projections

As film stock has disappeared from our screens and lives, artists have perversely fallen in love with its very obsolescence. LA-based Jennifer West’s film strip installations are a swansong to this disappearing technology: there’s no screen but visitors “activate” the films by using flashlights and there will be a series of live performances. Moira Jeffrey

• Tramway, Glasgow, until 30 October, www.tramway.org

THEATRE: Democracy

The Autumn Season begins, and Glasgow-based Rapture is first out of the blocks with a full-scale production of Michael Frayn’s acclaimed 2003 play Democracy. The scene is West Germany, 1969, at the height of the Cold War. Newly elected Chancellor Willy Brandt has been told there is an East German spy in his office; and so begins a high political drama about truth and lies, idealism and corruption, democracy and the manipulation of power. Michael Emans directs a cast of ten, led by Tom Hodgkins as Brandt. Joyce McMillan

• MacRobert, Stirling, tonight; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 6-10 September; King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, 29 September until 1 October, and on tour until 12 October.

CLASSICAL: Echoes and Traces

Cappella Nova premiere Echoes and Traces this week, eight new choral works written in response to an ancient Orcadian plainsong fragment. The composers are a varied bunch, drawn from the classical and folk music worlds: Stuart MacRae, Rory Boyle, Sally Beamish, above, Matthew Whiteside, Hanna Tuulikki, Aidan O’Rourke, Savourna Stevenson and Ailie Robertson, who had the idea for the project in the first place. Ken Walton

• Duff House, 4 September; St Magnus Cathedral, 5 September; Iona Abbey, 7 September; Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, 8 September www.historicenvironment.scot/echoes-and-traces