Live at Perthshire Amber

Julie Fowlis is now a fine ambassador for the music, song and culture of her Outer Hebridean homeland and this live recording is a timely opportunity for those that have not been treated to a live performance to get a taste of it.

In classic style, Fowlis begins the concert with the unadorned beauty of her own voice in the song ‘Ho Bha Mi, He Bha Mi’. There is always a sensitive weighting of mournful ballads alongside sets of tunes and lively waulking songs – traditionally sung by Scottish women while they beat cloth in the production of tweed.

The usual band line-up is present with Fowlis for this concert at Perthshire Amber. The tightness of the unit, with her husband Eamon Doorley on bouzouki, Tony Byrne on guitar and the bodhrnn of Martin O’Neill, gives a measured calm to the performance. However, it is the fiddle of Duncan Chisholm that, alongside Fowlis’ voice, allows their live performances to soar.

The concert includes a short, sweet Gaelic language interpretation of the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’, the gorgeous classic from her first album, ‘Biodh An Deoch Seo ‘n Laimh Mo Ruin’ and the distinctive puirt-a-beul (literally, tunes from the mouth) Gaelic vocal tradition in which the mouth truly becomes an instrument. But what is noticeably lacking is the live banter that characterises their shows. A live album should really have captured a little of the wit and humour that Doorley and Chisholm intersperse among the performances.