EIF: Siobhan Miller

Siobhan Miller spent her summers as a child going round Scotland’s folk festivals with her parents, who themselves had been involved in the scene since the early 70s. The influence of those times and the learning from the older singers she encountered showed as she moved comfortably from traditional songs to the popular composers of the revival days to contemporary writers and her own songs. Her opening number, a co-write with Lau’s Kris Drever, was a gentle reflection on the memory contained in everyday objects, ‘the grain in the table that holds conversations’ as one memorable line put it. 

The tale of the ‘Selkie of Sule Skerry’, with its shape-shifting characters and tragic outcome, showed that Miller can effectively deliver a ballad, centred and measured, using the full range of her expressive voice from a breathy whisper to bell-like head tones. Indeed, in the difficult acoustic of this venue it was the latter that provided the better definition, especially when the full forces of her four-piece band were marshalled. The arrangement on the Selkie was a good example of a careful use of the instruments, with John Lowrie’s supportive, ‘just right’ chords on the piano at the song’s opening, with bowed double bass from Miller’s husband, Ewan Burton, and fiddle from Charlie Stewart coming in to support the dramatic denouement of the story. 

Other treats from the authorless tradition were the rollicking tongue-twister, ‘The Tranent Wedding’ and ‘Loving Hannah’, the latter accompanied only by Innes White’s fluid acoustic guitar. She showed her range with the pop inflected ‘Did It Mean Something?’ and a collaboration between Burton and contemporary Scottish song machine, Findlay Napier, which had a chord sequence Paul Simon himself might have been pleased with and a refrain which had the audience singing along. 

It was her choice of songs by the previous generation of writers that showed her connection to the ever-evolving folk tradition. Ed Pickford’s ‘Pound a Week Rise’ has lost none of its sting, while the witty rhyming of Adam McNaughtan’s ‘Cholesterol’ brought a show-stopping music hall style piano solo from Lowrie that had the audience erupting in applause mid-song. Si Kahn’s ‘What You Do With What You Got’ had an imaginative rhythmic accompaniment that showed that, although she draws on the revival and the folk tradition, there are few of the instrumental limitations of that earlier period. Her arrangements are very contemporary and delivered by top-drawer musicians. 

This was an evening of rich, confident singing and deft, tasteful instrumental work that belied the long gap forced on the musicians by the pandemic. By the time the audience had finished joining in the last chorus of Andy M. Stewart’s ‘Rambling Rover’ it knew it had been nurtured through an evening of Scottish folk at its best.