Peatbog Faeries

01/02/2010

Lock up your daughters @ Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow

Peatbog Faeries
The Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow
4/5

Lock up your daughters: four words you never thought you’d read in a Peatbog Faeries review. But given the scenes of mass adulation inside The Old Fruitmarket, and the screams and mobbing which occur when fiddler Ross Couper steps outside afterwards, it’s an interesting development in the movable feast that is the Faeries’ 16-year career.

Tonight’s show is a fittingly triumphant finale to this 17^th Celtic Connections, which has seen the festival overcome recession, the coldest winter for decades and a shorter than usual run to match last year’s 100,000+ ticket sales and take over £1m at the box office. With the Fruitmarket crammed to the gunwhales with arms-aloft, jig-happy, ceilidh-daft hellraisers this is the embodiment of festival atmosphere at its purest: a bunch of strangers grinning from ear to ear united by that feelgood mix of African beats-meet-rave rhythms romping through trad Scots and Irish tunes.

It’s a cocktail that’s long been perfected by the Peatbogs, but tonight there’s a spicy twist in the twin-assault of fiddlers filling the not inconsiderable shoes of regular bowman Adam Sutherland. Semi-naked, smothered in tribal body paint, they’re playing like axe-wielding rock god bravehearts, foot-on-monitor and leaping off the drum riser, doing Pete Townshend windmill arms, and even pulling a Status Quo move with guitarist Tom Salter.

Young Peter Tickell, lauded as “extraordinary” by Sting and not hindered by his moody Jim Morrison looks, and Shetlander Couper, on loan from his regular outfit Bodega, are a fiesty and fiery pair and they invigorate the Peatbogs line-up as they weave around bagpipe/whistle player Peter Morrison centre-stage.

The set doesn’t deviate from the expected jumbled mix of old and new original compositions, interspersed with trad folk and world music slips, with the emphasis veering from the brass section to the swirled-up ravey synths, to Salter’s heavily African-influenced guitar, though the drum solo perhaps skids off into dangerously Led Zep territory, taking the rock god posturing a step too far.

While at the other end of town the Chemikal Underground 15^th birthday celebration is pulling down the shutters on Celtic Connections 2010 in its own thoroughly Scottish and unashamedly indie way, this fired-up Fruitmarket fling is the essence of the tartan blood that keeps the heart of the festival beating.

Vicky Davidson