Redood Mountain / Glad Cafe Glasgow / 28.9.17

Folk-country with a Caledonian twist

​Following in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly is a brave move, but Redwood Mountain mine the same musical material for new gems. Writing new tunes for some of the songs collected by Alan Lomax on his mid-20th century travels through the rural south of the US, the duo is keeping some pretty rarified company: Lomax was the first to record Guthrie, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters and others, and gave Pete Seeger his first break.

But by seeking out songs with some kind of Scottish connection and pairing guitar with trad fiddle Redwood Mountain's Amy Geddes and Dean Owens do manage to shed some new light on the material.

Owens chatted merrily through some of the songs' backstories while Geddes punctured the bonhomie with cruelly funny withering asides.

​Some of the songs had a slight pastiche feeling, but others were rich and touching. The music felt most interesting where the Scottish influence was heaviest, where you felt new lines and connections were being drawn, uncovering the common roots of two very different strands of folk music. ​

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds / Hydro Glasgow / 27.9.17

A great front man is a dictator, and Nick Cave is one of the best there is.

With unhinged intensity he whispered and bellowed the first songs at the front three rows of a packed, though not quite full, Hydro in Glasgow as though playing an intimate club show.

Then a few songs in he stretched out those bony preacher fingers and tugged the air. Hundreds of people followed his gesture, moving towards to the stage as one, mesmerised and pressing close, coming into his manic sphere of influence.

With grimacing, straining, sweating commitment he held us rapt for two hours, willing every beautifully timed syllable out as though composing them on the spot. It was mesmerising, bewitching and slightly unreal.

Backing band The Bad Seeds sounded amazing, reined-in and taut, only exploding into noisesome chaos briefly and with devastating effect. Cave too, not the strongest singer on his records, sang with surprising richness.

The blistering, hypnotic energy of the first five songs dissipated and Cave spent too long basking in the crowd's adoration, held aloft on fans' shoulders or shepherding audience members on stage.

But along the way we got a fragile, broken Into My Arms, the crowd taking up the chorus with gentle, hymnal empathy, the air charged with sorrowful joy. The line 'I believe in love', a cliché in others' hands, became a defiant protestation of faith thrown out at the gathering darkness.

Red Right Hand was miraculously understated. It could so easily turn into an overblown carnival blast, but it was quiet, sinister, brooding, its skeezy, sleazy organ threateningly insinuating, the slick groove a lushly carpeted stairway to damnation.

The massive Hydro seemed an odd choice for someone like Cave, a determined indie oddball not given to lavish visuals or cynical profiteering. Not only did he do a better job of anyone I've ever seen of involving the whole hall through sheer force of personality, it became a bigger, more cathartic and more moving experience because twelve thousand people were there rather than twelve hundred. ​

The sound was beautiful, rich and dreamy but, annoyingly, came in part from backing tapes. But what marked this show out was not how it sounded but how it looked. This was the most stunningly lit show I've ever seen.o edit.