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Jacouse - "Live at Kelso folk club - review" |
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We had the pleasure of the first live gig from Scots trio Jacouse at Kelso on Friday night. A small audience enjoyed some of the best music we have heard in the town for a long time. Jacouse - Arthur (guitar and vocals), Margo (vocals, and Arthur's sister which as ever works superbly for harmony) and Andrew (electric fiddle) - are from Prestonpans and have been preparing a new CD, and getting ready to look for gigs. We did not know Kelso was to be their debut with the new material. First of all, they have an excellent sound system and know how to use it. While we would usually consider unamplified trio playing quite adequate for the room, the electric fiddle obviously demands plugged in performance and it's so important to the sound of this instrument. Andrew did, for a jest, do a quick Hendrix imitation with distorted guitar patch on his FX pedal unit, but in fact the fiddle was used with subtlelty to create a range of tones from mellow to buzzy, soft to bright. Arthur's flatpicked guitar benefited to, with a harp-like tone and great separation; it was hard to believe this wasn't fingerpicking, but indeed it was all straight plectrum work and very precise in rythm and lefthand synch. The combination can best be called highly polished. This is a line-up similar to the John Wright Band instrumentally but the effect is different; Arthur's vocal range is unusual, running from a soft baritone to a clear counter-tenor without any break. Because he can reach high notes without straining he handles Scottish songs as originally written, without needing to transpose down, and he can weave harmonies round Margo's vocals since she has a similar wide compass. Their showpiece version of 'Jock o'Hazeldean' shifts up an entire tone for the final verse, and it's a song which already requires a vocal highjumps. Andrew's fiddle playing is brilliant, often funny, always set off by his total absorption - he moves with the fiddle and the tune, and some of the tunes mean a lot of movement. He claims not to be able to play proper traditional stuff. Maybe not in style, but his style is so original and infectious that I for one just sat with a stupid grin on my face when he did his instrumental solos. He stayed up when I did a couple of songs, and joined in one of mine he had never heard before - pretty well perfectly. His idea of getting warmed up is to play fast and furiously for an hour; then he's just about ready to do the DIFFICULT stuff.. For me, Jacouse's choice of songs was a bonus. I have wanted hear 'The Laird o'Cockpen' done well, without bouncy piano and schoolmaam singing, for a long time. They pulled it off. 'Johnny Cope', once as an instrumental and once as the song, was dynamic. 'Logie o'Buchan' was as beautiful as that song can be. 'Aye Waukin-o' was duetted superbly. But then was 'There She Goes' (altered to 'There He Goes') and Coldplay's 'Yellow'... and some Beatles stuff... and Arthur doing the 'Blackleg Miner' with memories of fundraising concerts (which started Margo and him singing together). We ended up with Jacouse doing three 'halves' instead of two, doing a repeated Hazeldean and Johnny Cope by request, and getting universal approval from the audience. Margo says she does play keyboards and they also have a complete dance set and a stack of pop standards, all treated to unique arrangements and Andrew's fiddle. So they are up for something more than folk club gigs. Their website is www.jacouse.com/ and they've got many of the songs I have mentioned at http://www.mp3.com/jacouse When dealing with Scottish songs, there tends to be a division of approach. On the one hand you get the official line from music teachers still using the awful harmonies and arrangements inherited from 150 years ago, and then you get the DADGAD drone school which takes the bumptious awfulness away by replacing it with a modal sound and limited vocal compass. What's good about Jacouse is that they do neither. The whole soaring range of vocal possibilities is used, and the accompaniment flows or thunders along as appropriate, with the fiddle weaving a low viola-like counterpoint to the melody. This is neither shortbread tin music, nor new celtic cellar bar plainsong. They manage to be totally contemporary without doing anything to destroy traditional values - and somehow do the reverse with modern chart material, to add variety. David Kilpatrick, |