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Review: Kris Drever, Folk House – ‘Fills your heart’
What with all of the Balkan, Klezmer, folk-punk stuff around it’s easy to forget the utter joy that a great singer-songwriter can bring.
Kris Drever is, undoubtedly, a really great singer-songwriter. From the Orkney Islands, a member of Lau, contributor to the gorgeous Spell Songs project, winner of countless folk awards, he is one of those hidden gems that the folk world holds so dear.
Alongside the likes of Boo Hewerdine, Martin Stephenson and Stephen Duffy, he uses folk music as a place to jump from, rather than an end in itself.
is needed now More than ever
This evening is packed with could-be-standards, songs that ooze charm and warmth, songs with choruses to sing and melodies that you will hum long into the night.
Kris Drever is a reminder that there are great singer-songwriters out there that use folk as a jumping off point – photo: Gavin McNamara
You Know More Than You Know is as snug as a peat-fired barroom, Drever’s voice slightly blurred, wonderfully welcoming. His guitar shimmers, an echo of the starlight gathering outside. He is a generous host, affable and chatty, open and honest.
There are three new songs, none of which have been recorded yet, all of which are being tried out on this tour. Each one is stunning although titles aren’t really forthcoming.
One that might be called I’ll Tell You I Love You is bruised and battered but utterly overwhelmed with devotion, Drever is the romantic who has been through it all yet still believes in love. Save a Space for Me is just as lovely, just as heartfelt and, also, has a chorus to pierce the stoniest of hearts. These are songs to be swooned over.
If Wishes Were Horses has long been one of Drever’s finest songs and here it entirely fills the room. His guitar thrums with a full rubber-band buzz, the perfect companion to that whiskey-haze of a voice. The opening line is “I wish that we were made of gold” and, somehow, it is the most beautiful thing that you’ve ever heard, sentimental yet wide-eyed and sincere.
Although Drever writes some of the most wonderful love songs, he is more than capable of turning his gaze outward too. Catterline is windswept, all hard rocks and heather, but it tells of artist Joan Eardley. There’s a drowsiness, a wooziness to Drever’s voice, one that perfectly captures Eardley’s burnished sense of place.
Capernaum is about Edinburgh and is both delightfully groovy and faintly militaristic, much like that fine old city itself.
His support act for the tour is Heather Cartwright, a singer and guitar player who has a Beeswing-delicacy. She joins him towards the end of his set adding a further level of loveliness to Ghosts, from Lau’s classic The Bell That Never Rang album. It is just as beautiful, just as heartfelt as anything else tonight.
Drever might not cause frenzied outbreaks of jumping and dancing, there might be no Eastern European influences, but he fills your heart. He leaves you gleaming from the inside, the shimmering heat of a ready-brek glow obvious for all to see.
Main image: Gavin McNamara
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