REVIEW: Kathryn Joseph Neu! Elgin

REVIEW: Neu! Elgin

Drouthy Cobbler, Elgin

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by Margaret Chrystall

THERE were many introductions the night Neu! Reekie came to Elgin for a second time – not least the chance to hear Kathryn Joseph return on the day her new album launched.

From When I Wake The Want Is has been in the bag for a couple of years, so bridges the gap since 2015’s Bones You Have Thrown Me And Blood I’ve Spilled, the Scottish Album Of The Year 2015 winner that alerted the world to Kathryn’s talent.

Neu! Reekie’s Michael Pedersen opened the night in a packed and meltingly sweaty Drouthy Cobbler on Friday pointing out that August 10 was a special day – “because we’re all here together”.

But also “it’s the album release today of one of our favourite singers Kathryn Joseph... and we’re chuffed to the moon and back to have her with us.”

Co-Neu! Reekie organiser Kevin Williamson at this point remembered that in 1978 he had travelled down from Thurso to get the second Clash album. So travelling from Inverness to Elgin to hear Kathryn launch her album – her first on Mogwai’s Rock Action label – didn’t seem so far.

But first, as is the tradition of the Neu! nights, there were many other attractions on the bill – short films and animations and in a collaboration with the venue, their choice of debuting poet Mo Haslam and solo-for-the-first time musician Fionn McKerron.

Neu! added in the poet Hollie McNish and a short film Michael had made, an ironic travelogue from tour dates Michael and his best friend, the late Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison, had been on together. Scott had appeared at a Neu! Reekie night in Elgin before and had been due to return in the days when he went missing before his death.

The film showed the quirky humour and the warmth of the musician and made a moving interlude in the light-hearted celebratory feel of the night.

Debuting poet Jo Haslam was reading a poem in front of an audience for the first time, but began with a story to introduce it that must have been at least five times as long as the poem itself which involved a birchbark canoe, the Scouting movement’s fleur de lys symbol and motto Be Prepared, a special 50p plus life’s taste for presenting coincidences which Jo feels are “a synchronisation of the universe”.

Her poem Bon Voyage resonated with everything she had told us and was a confident, memorable debut.

Fionn McKerron played guitar and sang songs that included a strong cover of Irish band The Strypes’ Blue Collar Jane, his own Mesmerise possibly his strongest with great lyrics – “life’s too short, you have to choose the right road” – and a spine-tingling falsetto. Hollie McNish’s contemporary, knowing poems took us through different ages in her life, Yanking a ‘coming’ of age poem to make guys wince.

In a short set, Kathryn solo at her piano performedFrom When I Wake The Want Is, And You SurvivedTell My Lover, Safebefore reverting to The Crow from the first album. “This is the one I never play,” she had grinned at us before Safe, but mid-Crow she stopped grinning “Oh Sh**!” before repeating “So sorry!” in a very Kathryn moment – irreverent and humbly apologetic.The very immediate anthem The Mountain and final album track “^^” followed before she introduced Marcus Doo and the two sang his The Lantern, the crowd joining in as requested for a song that with lines such as “livings earned, killing things” was a good fit with

the sometimes savage Nature at the heart of Kathryn’s work.