It’s technically been five years since the last Mull Historical Society album, in that time the man behind the group has released records under his real name, Colin Macintyre. For me, there was always a distinction between the two moniker’s efforts, the first three MHS albums are brilliant, theatrically arranged, pseudo-conceptual and yet still personal, affecting and entertaining LPs, but the Macintyre recordings wound up sounding too pop, too clean and safe, and their more heartfelt attempts felt contrived or just missed the mark. So, I was curious tonight, with this gig, to get a sense of whether that had been something down to the name of the band or whether it was just the way Macintyre’s music had headed naturally. More than anything though I hoped any new songs we’d hear would have that same quirky magic of those early works.
Largely tonight’s set focused on tracks taken from his first record Loss, which is now ten years old, after a rather plodding opener he dove into a welcome, if wonky, rendition of Animal Canabus, it sounded like the band were finding their feet a little – this being the second gig of the tour, after a show playing at Colin’s old school (now a venue) An Tobar on Mull.
By Peculiar (from This Is Hope, my favourite MHS record) the group were finding their form, and Macintyre began adding a fair bit of autobiographical detail preceding each track, something he later stated he never usually did. Public Service Announcer was the first real highlight, enlivened by Colin’s lengthy spoken introduction and the tracks strange melodies and downbeat yet uplifting choruses. The set generally consisted of tracks from the debut LP, perhaps partly in tribute to its anniversary, or maybe because Colin felt that this first record and this new album shared similarly personal ground; however the new LP’s title track City Awakenings failed, for me, to make much of an impression and it was left to spirited rendtions of Instead and The Final Arrears to bring the set back to life.
Macintyre played a couple of tunes on his own with an acoustic guitar, but sadly this showed the weaknesses of later material all the more, the story behind Samuel Dempster RIP is far more emotional and beautiful than the song it inspired, which is a real shame.
The set closed with a lively, full sounding blast of the band’s theme song Mull Historical Society, a rousing call to arms filled with jubilant optimism contrasting nicely against the twee implications of the titular society.
It was wise for Macintyre and co to stick to earlier material, though it would have been nice to have gotten more of a taste of the new record, despite my misgivings about what I’ve heard so far. Macintyre is an artist I always want to succeed, and the last couple of albums seemed to represent a bit of an identity crisis, almost as if he was trying to make himself more of a commercial prospect, when his finest and most accessible material is when he really plays with the craft and indulges his musical and historical whims. Indeed, Macintyre reflected that if it wasn’t for his family, and his family history, he probably wouldn’t have any songs, such is the inspiration he draws from them.
Overall this was a fine set, but one that didn’t really sell the ‘new’ stuff to me as much as it did remind me of why Mull Historical Society first caught my attention.
