A CONCERT REVIEW

Capercaillie at Chichester, November 9, 2007

I know Ms Matheson, (OBE), from a photograph in which her hair is black and her eyes are blue, as haunting, beautiful and disturbing as Steve Earle's Galway girl, but here in Chichester tonight she seems to be looking towards Edith Piaf's waif. Her voice though, like Edith's, remains peerless, unique.
    She stands slight at the microphone, her pale hands and thin fingers nervously fidgeting the rhythms which her voice seems somehow to transcend and rise above. But at times that voice seems too weak to rise above the volume of the seven musicians littered among the silver microphones behind her and she turns and gesticulates to the sound man in his dark corner at the back of the stage. Among these seven, tall and centre stage, is Michael McGoldrick, a man you wouldn't want to mess with, yet whose delicacy with the flute and uilleann pipes has made him the flautist of choice for musicians as diverse as Kate Rusby, John Cale, Youssou N'Dour.
    The rest of the band seem to lean like saplings on this old tree while Ms Matheson flits around and among them all like some woodland sprite. But she is woodland sprite of 44 years and carries a plastic bottle of water, and she frequently sits on the floor backstage and lets the boys get on with it. She's been unwell, a throat infection, and you wonder to what degree she is preserving her voice for Cardiff on Sunday and for the rest of the tour. It's a difficult balance. Do you give it all you've got and risk the future or do you hold back and risk the appreciation of tonight's audience? The second of these seems to be the order of the night here in Chichester but it's not working. The set seems disjointed, not flowing smoothly as, for instance, an evening with Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh and Altan would flow.
    Even Manus Lunny (brother of Dónal who, coincidentally, plays as a guest with Altan) with his bouzouki seems at a loss as to know what to do here. Is Che Beresford banging the drums just a bit too fiercely? Or is it that the breaks between the tunes are just that - breaks, when they should be connections?
Suddenly, at about the halfway point of the set (although we're all concerned that we may by now be beyond that point) Edith picks herself up wearily from the Parisian gutter at the back of the stage, places her plastic bottle on the floor and walks to the microphone. It looks almost as if she is about to say ‘I can't go on' but instead, without introduction and, seemingly without consultation with the crew, she breaks into the virtual solo of a Gaelic tune unknown to me. The voice is both faltering and pure and it is the vulnerability of the voice that makes you think of the angels. It is as if she is saying ‘Alright. You've asked for it. I'm going to give you something now. Something you won't forget. I'm not well but I can do it.'
    And she does it. From this point we know that whatever happens now we've had our money's worth. Gradually the theatre becomes a whole. Clapping the rhythms of the jigs and reels, silenced and mesmerised by the solos. Two girls, their long hair waving like seaweed in a Scottish sea-loch, sit at the front of the stage, at the foot of their heroine's old and pointed shoes. They are prevented from dancing by a dark-suited official but it doesn't matter now. Nothing does.
    The close partnership of McGoldrick's flute and Charlie McKerron's fiddle is not far short of outstanding, if all too brief. As the singer is preserving her voice, perhaps McKerron is looking after his recently broken arm - clearly, during brief interludes, he stretches and flexes his fingers. This flute/fiddle combination makes me regret not having seen McGoldrick playing with Dezi Donnelly. I have to content myself with my second-rate recordings from the radio. There are more reels, a waulking song and some gently delivered ballads. Translated, the Gaelic becomes, or remains, the poetry of simplicity:

Gorgeous ribbons, daughter of the fiddler / Skirt of dimity, petticoats of calico
Gorgeous ribbons, daughter of the fiddler / Silk skirt on Mary
High-heeled shoes, scarlet cloak / Skirt of dimity, petticoats of calico
High-heeled shoes, scarlet cloak / Gorgeous ribbons, Mary.

It's a poetry that demands a tune. It is awkward to read the printed form but the simplicity and un-adornment of the words is as good as anything from the Chuck Berry songbook. Some of the nouns may have changed over the years but the iconographies remain intact. Of course, unlike Mr Berry's words, this stuff was never intended to be written down — it is essentially aural.
    Capercaillie have given us their music and the singer has given herself.

It is an interesting audience here tonight — and what is interesting is that it is not interesting. The two seaweed girls are non-conformists among the many who seem, probably, older even than I. Is this a typical Capercaillie audience or is this a Chichester audience? Ice cream from a cardboard tub eaten with a plastic scoop. It'll be Losely, organic, expensive. Are these the people who like to listen to Gaelic / contemporary fusions? Not brave enough perhaps to contemplate true contemporary, not educated enough in the ways of Cecil Sharp and professor Child to appreciate the unadulterated ancient songs. People like me, I suppose. Does this mean that an outfit such as Capercaillie is middle of the road? It probably does. Does it matter? It probably doesn't. They may perhaps be middle of the road musically but sartorially they are decidedly gauche. I have always associated McGoldrick with the loose shirt and Levis brigade (how could someone who has appeared in Coronation Street be anything else?) but it seems they are all part of the same club. The only exceptions are the singer's wedding ring, and the sequins on the cutty sark she wears over her jeans which sparkle in the red and blue lights hanging from the dark gantry. And the microphones on their steel stands, the chromium rings around the drums, the sea-green shine from the accordion of Donald Shaw, and the dazzling white of Ewan Vernal's five string bass.

With the tunes, the sweet voice, the sounds of the flute and the fiddle it is these shinings and flashings that accompany me as I drive home. Or is it the headlights of other cars?