Glasgow’s Hug and Pint venue genuinely is intimate, with a capacity of 120. It’s packed tonight, with folk here for a gig that is part of Glasgow’s annual Celtic Connections festival. That’s close enough for most folk to be able to see the whites of these two acts’ eyes – but on the strength of both of them live and on record that’s not something that should be taken for granted for much longer.
Quincey May Brown hails from Manchester. Backed tonight by Joel Harries on guitar (of Lichen Slow) and James Kruszelnicki on saxophone, she plays harp and sings. Her set tonight is mostly drawn from her excellent debut album Basic Surgeon, released in November last year. It’s a fantastic album, and live the songs are absolutely fantastic, too. She acknowledges most of the song titles concern body parts, and what songs they are. She avoids cliché, and comes up with beautiful lyrics that leave many other songwriters to shame (many of the men from the city’s legion of indie bands would struggle to come up with as many original ideas in several albums as she does in a single song). She tells us how ‘Bodies Of Water’ concerns her first experiences clubbing after lockdown, in clubs with “too much smart casual” and I really hope she did use the put-down line ‘and I don’t mean to be rude fella, but not even if I was as old as Methuselah.’ I may starve until payday but I made a dash to the merch table for the album and earlier 10” EP What I’ll Say When I See You. Well worth it.
Raveloe – the project of Glasgow singer-songwriter Kim Grant – also released her debut album, Exit Music, in November last year. Having seen her play both solo and as part of Raveloe the group as a support act it’s great to see her and band playing a headlining gig. The album made GIITTV’s album’s of the year list and I’m aware of publications where people were fighting to be able to review the album. Her set opens, as does the album, with ‘Countertop‘ and ‘The Chair Is Nowhere.’
Like Quincey May Brown, what continues to impress about Kim Grant is the originality of her songwriting. In stripped down form we see this, but with the band setting these songs become experiences taken to a whole new level, a spectacular thing of beauty. While the worlds of folk and shoegazing may appear distant, here they collide beautifully, particularly on ‘Rustle In The Leaves‘ with its fantastic violin accompaniment. It’s not just the album that gets an airing – there’s the earlier ‘Catkins‘ single from 2021 – but one of the highlights is a new, as yet untitled song that she dedicates “to anyone who may be suffering from any form of mental illness.” Despite playing down her keyboard-playing skills, this is just her and the keys and it’s fantastic. Hopefully the first taste of album no.2, but desperate as I and many others are to hear that, it will arrive in its own time.
The gig closes with ‘Keep Count‘ and as we empty from the basement onto a damp Great Western Road, the thought occurs that these are two very individual talents who Celtic Connections will most likely be welcoming back to much bigger headlining shows in future years. In the meantime, get yourself along to see both of them as soon as possible.
Photos: Mike Melville
