As the twinkling lights and decorations that punctured the dark days are packed away for another year there is nothing better to restore the spirits than some good music, a panacea to help pass the hours until the sun again rides high in the sky.
So here’s a new album released by Innes Watson last month to get your ears around. Perfect for a downcast January day.
I would guess that everyone associated in the trad world will know of Innes Watson. As well as tutoring at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Innes is much in demand and features in several projects and bands such as Lori Watson Trio, Jarleth Henderson Band, Grit Orchestra and Treacherous Orchestra.
Credited on a plethora of other recordings, it is perhaps understandable that he has only now found time to put together an album containing much of his own music spawned during the Celtic Connections festival in 2011.
Well known as a fiddler in the Treacherous Orchestra he has reverted to his first instrument, guitar, to show case his remarkable skills and his delightful compositions in a choice collection, expertly played and superbly paced.
The opening two tracks are tributes to his father Sandy who ignited the young Innes’s muse. A jaunty Prelude for Sandy sets the tone for the album and leads neatly into the groove rhythm of Doo Da. I defy anyone to resist engaging in a bit of chin dancing!
In a change of pace, Feds is Innes’s take on a classic tune made famous by Aly Bain, Waiting for the Federals. Though the melody is unmistakeble, the smoky late night jazz club feel is something different and, though purists may disagree, I think it works well. Following that Innes emulates many of the great folk guitarists with Mando Endo, evoking feelings of drifting along a meandering river on a lazy, warm late spring day.
https://youtu.be/ZgAKBuDtK-o
Waste Not is a poignant comment on the diminishing resources of our planet combining deft fretwork and silky strings to make a firm but gentle point. Contrasting with the next track Waste, Innes celebrates the melting pot that Glasgow has become, attracting many young, precociously talented musicians to strutt their stuff 24/7! A great track that sums up the energy and inventiveness of the time with a subtle nod to the sound of The Treacherous Orchestra.
Guitarists naturally gravitate to their favoured luthier and Roger is a fabulous track dedicated to Roger Bucknall of Fylde guitars. It’s a lovely track that shows off the tone and versatility of the instrument and though Roger may have been scunnered by Innes’s treatment of his instruments early on, he’ll no doubt be quietly proud of the tone and warmth that now emanates from his creations.
Normally I’d try and highlight a few tracks that I particularly like but this whole album is so well constructed that it’s difficult not to put it on and not listen from start to finish. Checking in at the milestones of Innes’s journey from breaking his first guitar at the tender age of four to the deliciously funky Guitar Colloquium (Huggy Bear eat your heart out!), it’s hard to define exactly where this music comes from. But, perhaps that’s the point.
It’s just great music that comes from a man who is simply an enigma as he sits squarely in the middle of the burgeoning upturn in Scottish Traditional Music yet creates an album that stands alone, unique, refusing to be pigeonholed into any particular genre.
At times gentle and thoughtful, a wild effervescence is always close to the surface ready to bubble over. Quirky yet even slightly conservative, this is an album in which some could easily have lost control and over played their hand but Innes is all about the music and the result is a well produced and precisely measured product that will gain him many more fans.
You can watch Innes perform Guitar Colloquium later this month at Celtic Connections.
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