5 STAR Review – The Scotsman – ‘White Nights’
CATRIONA McKAY & CHRIS STOUT – WHITE NIGHTS *****
MCKAY STOUT MUSIC,
MCKAY STOUT MUSIC,
THIS PAIR, harper and fiddler, have been sparking creatively off each other for years and this disc sees them at their collaborative best so far. It’s worth buying for its stunning opening track alone, Missing You, a plangent, meditative lament which seems to hover somewhere between a numinous north and a sultry far east.
Elsewhere is heady, venturesome delight in the mercurial darting of Isflak or the cascading title track. There’s a clear Nordic ring to Stout’s fiddle (made in his native Fair Isle, after all), a gentle nod to Shetland’s wee folk in Da Trow’s Jig, and a decidedly Scandinavian accent to the headlong rush of Roddy Sinclair, with McKay’s nimble and often fiercely syncopated harping urging on the pace and similarly putting an intense spin on Edges and High Water.
They push their instruments hard and far, but come home to touch base beautifully with the auld-farrant Scots melancholy of the closing air, Michaelswood.
Elsewhere is heady, venturesome delight in the mercurial darting of Isflak or the cascading title track. There’s a clear Nordic ring to Stout’s fiddle (made in his native Fair Isle, after all), a gentle nod to Shetland’s wee folk in Da Trow’s Jig, and a decidedly Scandinavian accent to the headlong rush of Roddy Sinclair, with McKay’s nimble and often fiercely syncopated harping urging on the pace and similarly putting an intense spin on Edges and High Water.
They push their instruments hard and far, but come home to touch base beautifully with the auld-farrant Scots melancholy of the closing air, Michaelswood.
Jim Gilchrist
19th July 2010
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