A calm November evening welcomes earnest newbies and grizzled veterans to this most resolutely ordinary of venues, home to about 200 fans of our nation’s own soul music. It resembles an enlarged front room in an oversized house, upstairs to a discreet bar selling cake as well as coffee, tea and cider. No pretensions here, no ridiculously overpriced alcohol, just a table spread humbly with a selection of CD’s, a limited edition tour poster and the new EP from the support act, the luminous Heather Cartwright.

Originating from Carlisle, she now resides in Glasgow. Put simply, her voice is both nimble and exquisite, as intoxicating as the lithe finger picking on the fretboard of her slightly battered acoustic guitar. Every song is a highlight, especially a short ditty told from the perspective of a dog to its owner, posing the obvious question of ‘where do you go when you leave…?’ Her presence is reassuring, soothing, naturally uplifting, her tone pitch perfect and entrancing. 

Kris Drever might be better known as one third of LAU, the phenomenal folk trio hailing from Cambridge, the Orkney Islands and Oban respectively. However, he has been producing an album himself every couple of years since about 2006, building up an enviable body of work. As with most folk singers, his live set incorporates reworkings of traditional sea songs and other ballads, alongside his own, richly textured melodies. This evening, he instantly grabs the adoring audience’s attention with a slightly distorted instrumental opening, segueing effortlessly into a ringing refrain of ‘you know, more than you know’, leaving the assembled breathless with new anticipation. Going ‘folky’ early allows us to hear a whaling song, its chords clean and the lyrics absorbing, his fingers skittering up and down the fretboard with consummate ease. The jaunty refrain of ‘and the daylight is never long, brave boys’ encourages humming and ruminating, the casual intimacy of music taking hold almost imperceptibly.

He plays a new tune, in fact a couple - you’d never have known - and pithily points out that ‘a new one can’t become an old one, unless you play them!’ Ironically, all of the songs feel thoroughly lived in - that is the magic of folk : everything sounds familiar, from the first experience. ‘Hunker Down’, a Covid-era tune, is deliberately instructive [‘wind your neck in’], swiftly followed by plangent ringing, chopping into the note, delicate scales supporting. The mood transforms to something magical, ethereal even. 

At times, when Drever uses his feet as percussion, I’m reminded of a Seth Lakeman gig - over 10 years back, where his co-pilot drummed on a wooden box. The stripped down nature of the performance makes it even more involving for the listener, creating more rhythm, more tension, more attention. This comes to the fore with ‘Capernaum’, his song about Edinburgh, which swings while his voice rides smoothly over the riffs. Through ‘Catterline’, an ode to the Scottish painter Joan Eardley, Drever reveals an unvarnished openness, warmth and honesty to his vocals, revelling in the repeated ‘I made a mark’.

The mesmerising set continues, his difficulties with tuning being put down, his old guitar strings sounding like ‘farty rubber bands’! He has no need to worry - the propulsive, hypnotic ‘If Wishes Were Horses’ conjures up imagery of running across the uplands, scanning for flowing, unruly manes. When Drever captures a moment like this, he creates stillness, where one can inhabit the spaces between the pickings, the fulsome chorus, that natural plangency. You could revel in these moments for hours and hours. ‘There is a universality to songwriting’, he opines : there is something sacred ,too. Drever brings back Heather for the two encore songs, one of which is the quietly epic ‘Ghosts’, a mid period lament by LAU, borne up by lush harmonies and lamp lit trauma, during which several pins can be heard to drop. It’s all about those spaces in between. 

As we exit, the epiphanies stay firmly in place, breaths taken and the manner of the earth shifting; the streets shimmer and we can still believe in effortless JOY. 

Hugh Ogilvie.