Mairi Campbell and the Pendulum Band
The Queen’s Hall
A year ago I reviewed Mairi Campbell's first concert with her Pendulum Band for the Wee Review. I gave it a five-star review and said Mairi Campbell was a national treasure. A year later I was delighted to see that the Queens Hall were using my remarks as their lead promotion message for Mairi's second concert; the question of course was would we be disappointed tonight?
Before Mairi and her band took to the stage we had a warm-up act in Marc Pilley, who is a singer-songwriter from Dunbar, who now lives in Edinburgh. Marc originally had some success with his band Hobotalk, but now performs on his own. His music is a kind of fusion between folk and pop, perhaps the nearest comparison would be someone like Joni Mitchell. He has a nice melodic voice and good guitar technique, but his songs, which all seem to be written by him, lack some diversity and have limited lyrics which are often repeated. The end result is they all tend to sound much the same, are usually concerned with personal angst and in the end, although pleasant enough, are not very memorable.
Fortunately the same cannot be said for Mairi Campbell and the Pendulum Band. From the moment she took to the stage and began singing, grunting, dancing and playing the viola she was communicating with the audience in a visceral manner. Mairi of course began in the classical tradition at the Guildhall School of Music, but returned to her roots in Scottish traditional music. She and her husband Dave Francis formed a folk duo, The Cast, which became famous when their version of Auld Lang Syne was used in the film Sex and the City. Over the years Mairi has won many awards in the traditional music field, but more recently she has been moving into a different direction, working with director Kath Burlinson and composer Dave Gray.
In 2015 she did her first one woman show Pulse, which told the story of her rejection of the classical tradition and her return to her traditional roots. It introduced her flat stone pendulum, which symbolised her Highland crofting roots, and provided the name of her band. Pulse also told the story of how she got into dance in Cape Breton, and it also signalled a move away from the tradition and more into what Mairi calls ‘the pulse between the ancient and shamanic’, drawn from Scotland's rock, soil and water and the futuristic and electronic with the Pendulum Band bringing the music to the stage bound together by Mairi's voice and movement. The Pendulum Band are all very talented musicians individually, with Su-a Lee one of Scotland's finest cellist, William Jaquet on drums, Duncan Lyall on bass and keyboards, Innes Watson on guitar, Nicki Haire on violin and of course Mairi on viola. Together they create a unique and magic sound on stage from the first notes of the first number 'What the Devil ails ye?’ through ‘She is waiting’, ‘Paddle in my water’, ‘Side by Side, rough with the smooth’, a reworked Lea Rig, The wind blows, Pull me up, I come from the Sea and Minnie's House. They are very well backed by the vocal trio Luna Blu, made up of Ada Francis, Frankie Hay and Megan Savage. Together they create a unique and magical sound on stage. It’s not folk, it's not pop, it's not jazz, but it's a fusion of all these things and more, and it’s magic.
However it's not just the music and Mairi's expressive voice that creates the atmosphere but also the movement on stage, the movement of Mairi, who leans into the music and weaves spells with her hands, her body and a stick. She is backed up by very skilful step dancer, John Sikorski, whom Mairi dances with, and dancer Suzi Cunningham who creates a sensuous movement across the stage, Mairi intertwining with her. Together they create, yes, a shamanic spell, which holds the Queens Hall audience’s attention firmly for over an hour and at the end gets a riotous response and demands for an encore. This in turn produces 'Dreams are made of this'. My only criticism would be it wasn’t long enough, and I look forward to the next concert, hopefully in less than a year. Oh and yes Mairi Campbell is even more of a national treasure!
