Broken Chanter / Man of Minch (solo) – The Studio, Cumbernauld Theatre @ Lanternhouse – Friday 29th July 2022
Our last outing 10 days ago was to see two of the most accessible acts currently doing the rounds in Scotland at the moment.
I’m going to keep this relatively brief since I’ve seen the Broken Chanter live band several times in the last 10 months and the set-list this time out was almost identical to the recent Dundee show (same songs, marginally different order).
The good news is that the quality of the sound was several levels above the Dundee show with everything having its proper place in the mix, despite a near catastrophe with David’s pedal board early on.
The double hit of ‘So Long’ / ‘Allow Yourself’ remains a superb finale that really begs for a wider audience. But, for my money, the highlight this time around was a different pairing – ‘A Sad Display’ straight into ‘Fast Food, Parked Car’ with the band’s playing beautifully highlighting the different dynamics in what now felt like one cohesive piece with different sections rather than two separate songs.
It feels like we must have seen Man of the Minch play live before now, but although we’ve seen Pedro Cameron’s perform with others, his solo set was the first time we’ve seen him play his own tunes.
His set probably deserved the description of “stripped back” of any set I’ve ever seen as, performing just with an acoustic guitar, Pedro emphasised the folky nature of the songs with the electro-pop backing completely absent. Yet, you feel that Pedro could perform without even a guitar and his remarkable voice would still fill up any venue.
The set was mainly drawn from the album, although he managed to fit in two new songs, one from a collaboration with a Gaelic speaker, but unsurprisingly he finished the set by inviting David onstage for a duet on single ‘Gone’.
So all in all, it was a fine evening which was definitely enhanced by seeing some familiar faces for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.
Here’s a set of fairly decent photos from the show:
Manic Pop Thrills 