As labelmates with Chicago-based Drag City Records, Joanna Newsom and Alasdair Roberts might be expected to complement each other. Hearing them one after the other, in the City, Halls, Glasgow, turned out to be, rather, an invitation to compare and contrast.
Both musicians draw on old traditions. Newsom, with her concert harp and otherworldly songs, has captured the glossy music mags this weather, with claims of masterpiece for her latest album, Ys. The unwanted attentions of the odd folky publication aside, Roberts is, relatively speaking, overlooked.
Yet the Callander boy left by far a more positive impression with his 30-minute support slot than Newsom did with her two sets. Shy and unassuming, Roberts engages the attention and weaves an atmosphere with quiet, determined narratives and deceptively artful guitar playing.
There's an honesty to his performance, highlighted by his singing of the traditional song of tragic love Barbara Allen that embraced the merits of simple storytelling to great effect.
Newsom's equivalent, Robert Burns's Ca' the Ewes, would have felt uncomfortable in a primary school concert. Her childlike demeanour is clearly part of the appeal but there's an affected tweeness to her that makes you want to send her to her room without her tea.
The songs from Ys, accompanied by the Northern Sinfonia, underlined the part played by Van Dyke Parks's astute arrangements as Newsom appears to have two vocal tricks, the little girl with elocution lessons and an eldritch shriek that passes for dramatic resolution.
There is, admittedly, a certain hypnotic attraction in her ye olde rap rhyming and Nick Drake-esque rolling arpeggios, and her parting hymn hit a lovely mood, but the overall impression was one of overweening preciousness.
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