Five-star review for the four local bands on this latest Ironworks 'last night'
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REVIEW: Iain McLaughlin And The Outsiders, Shutter, The Joshua Hotel and Origami Wolf (Rory Baldwin)
Ironworks, Inverness
5 stars
A line-up of local bands took the Ironworks right back to its beginnings on Friday, as two sound experts – Mike Hogg and Alan ‘Dinner’ Mackinnon – returned from that early time to add their talents to the emotional night.
Iain McLaughlin of IMOUT Records had handpicked three other bands from the city that featured musicians spanning the last 25 years to play on the bill with his own headlining act Iain McLaughlin And The Outsiders.
Singer-songwriter Rory Baldwin appeared as Origami Wolf, the lo-fi indie electro of The Joshua Hotel was first heard live just last year, post-rock instrumentalists Shutter played for the first time since getting back together earlier this year, and Iain McLaughlin And The Outsiders treated the crowd to the grandeur and emotional pull that this occasion demanded from them.
As Iain himself commented, talking before the show, it was a gig that he would happily have come and watched in the audience, having picked some of his favourite bands and musicians to power up the night.
And just having that luxury – to be in the crowd and listen to these master musicians at work and remember all the times before when they have shared their songs, many in that venue, was guaranteed to make you well up at different moments as the night went on.
It had been a few years since last hearing Rory Baldwin’s music and the understated way that his voice and guitar can fill the space with presence and songs with stories that hook you in like the ancient mariner. There were just four songs in his 20-minute set, but with minimal chat he took us to the heart of the matter.
If we had been around 20 years ago, we would recognise opening song A Rumour Going Round, Rory grinned, a song living and breathing the powerful presence of his subject – “I only see her at funerals and weddings … Did you see her standing there, curious choice of formal wear…”
Rory referred back to earlier band Lymerick Smith and introduced song Shark saying: “It’s good to be working with Dinner – he did the sound for some of our first gigs at the Railway Club. But I’m not doing any songs that go back quite that far tonight!”
And there was a poignant moment before Daylight, Rory mentioning he had been trying to choose which songs to play. “Every song I listened to, there was always a second guitar and I miss that guitar every day. Sorry, I’m getting emotional,” he said, referring to the loss of the late Peter Nairne who had played with Rory in both Lymerick Smith and the Ball Deep.
Song The Line was about “friends letting you down” and started with Rory describing a situation where “There’s a line between friendship and love and I’m always on the wrong side”. But there’s also a raw sense of betrayal and loss in the song – “Sorry, I look like someone just died. Inside I’m all fear and doubt where before there was hope”.
Rory’s appearance as show-opener was a masterclass in making an impact but with a laid-back manner. He hoped someone would get pictures of the wall backstage signed by all the acts that have played there. He wished the Ironworks farewell.
“Enjoy this night because there won’t be many left,” he reminded us.
A complete contrast in genre came with The Joshua Hotel, Josh Mackenzie’s one-time lockdown side-project to the band Lional.
The indie electronica of Josh, guitarist Louis Slorach and Josh Gilbert on drums, has quickly become a winner in its own right.
Every time you hear the next se, or change upt, it’s evolving, cells dividing, new shifts in instrumentation, the bored drawl Josh can add to a vocal line. And each time the songs get an outing, they feel as if they are subtly moving on – and it’s been incredibly exciting to watch so far – maybe one moment in the set hinting that Josh needs to keep things new for himself.
In Somebody New, where the guitars sounded beefier this time, Josh’s vocal line was suddenly interrupted with unfamiliar words.
“Your flash is on!” he said looking out on someone with a cameraphone in the crowd. “F***ing hell!” he said, apparently laughing at himself for breaking out of the song, and almost as an afterthought: “I don’t even like these verses!”
It’s a vibrant world inside a Joshua Hotel song – with ghosts, illusions, driving city streets, trying on identities …
In Show Me, Josh sang “I feel like an actor, I love the pretence’. And in first song in the set Conversation Ends you feel the singer is adopting a persona, apparently confessing to the crowd and the song’s silent partner – ‘Lover, I need to tell you … sit down and listen/ Fashion models, the new age poets, when you’re beautiful you can just talk sh** to the crowd’.
As the band develops, the retro feel from when they first embraced electro triggers from the past, is fading as the songs’ own identities take over. Strongest track for me on Friday was Don’t You Remember – with its hard-not-to-join-in whistled melody and warning lyrics – “It’s OK to make mistakes, when you’re golden and you’re young”. But it’s the way Josh took the vocal spinning upwards with its angsty plea ‘Don’t you remember?’, then the phrase repeated a second time a few notes higher, more urgentl,y that took it into perfect pop territory.
It was starry stuff for that all-important first – and, sadly, last – appearance at the Ironworks for The Joshua Hotel.
There have been many important occasions in the venue for Shutter (you can read about them here: https://www.whatson-north.co.uk/whats-on/news/shutter-returns-to-the-ironworks-for-one-last-time-298243/).
Returning on Friday after an almost 10-year gap, their post-rock instrumentals had you reaching for all the words like ‘epic’ and ‘majesty’ again within a couple of bars of them taking the stage in funereal darkness. Just shadows against the black stage pierced by shafts of white light, the four-piece emerged with their album Pillars’ track Others before the familiar first notes of Crystal took over in a set that included Orka and ended with Sedona.
Through their tracks, the drama on stage always matched the dynamics, tempo changes and flow of the music – Matt Campbell moving forward in a hunched but wide-stanced pose, concentrating on his strings while James Roberts arched back, letting the sound soar out, his body stretching away from the music, the two often coming to playopposite each other centre stage. Contrasting approaches, each had body language that made a unique choreography, yet they still communed – and with us, the audience out there in the dark hall of the Ironworks with music and light shining down on uplifted faces.
It wouldn’t take much to imagine a kind of worship going on – and certainly the detail of the music, so clear and satisfyingly loud, surrounding us, was a tribute to the soundman – on this occasion Dinner, back to look after the band on their return.
Imagination convinced you that the power of the music proved Shutter held thunder once again in their hands and, at times you could visualise whole mountains raining down in rocks of sound – and it felt exhilarating.
But you could also imagine there would possibly be nerves for Matt, James, his brother Will Roberts on drums and Pete Macdonald!
Yet there was no sign as they powered on, with very little talking breaking into the music.
“Thank you to people travelling from Elgin, Tain and Glasgow,” Matt said, a reminder that Shutter’s reputation had seen them play across Scotland. Then later he thanked everyone at the Ironworks. Surely everyone present was loving this momentous return, yet also strangely terrible episode – the finality of it – in the Ironworks’ shrinking ‘last night’ series.
Shutter have been missed, so there must be hopes that their triumphant return on Friday is a signal of more to come.
There have been far too few chances to hear Iain McLaughlin And The Outsiders over the past few years. Covid and lockdowns have cheated us and them of the pleasure of performance.
Though the band played Monsterfest at Eden Court a few weeks ago – and it was so much more than a mutually beneficial experience – the Ironworks’ stage was always the natural home of this band.
They stretch out across that stage – and own it on so many levels.
Many years ago, I remember saying in some review of the band that Iain McLaughlin has the best voice in the Highlands – and it never sounds better to me than when it’s rolling out across the Ironworks’ space, getting the chance to shift up and down the gears and take your breath away.
The other Outsiders – bassist Dave Ramsay, lead guitarist Paul ‘Pel’ Elliott, Aly Duncan on keyboards and drummer Russell Montgomery – are a band of brothers any frontman would long for.
On Friday, complementing Iain’s vocal drama, Dave was a leaping, whirling dervish, eventually escaping the stage to wander among a welcoming crowd, making the most of this last chance.
A slow heartbeat of drums and Iain quietly bringing Rapid Eye Movement to life was their set opening. Not all exploding fire crackers but a reflective measured launch for this big set – the one that would have to last forever in our minds as the Ironworks swansong of this incredible band, that somehow are not huge and yet do everything right.
And song after song rolled out, each one crossing the last off your list as your favourite.
Falling Through The Dark was introduced by Iain – “This one’s about manic depression” – but he also celebrated being back on stage with normal service resumed in one way.
I’ve waited three years to have a guy bring me a guitar!” – and he enjoyed introducing us to the guitar techin question, Gary, every time he came onstage to swap instruments for the singer.
“We’re going to dig deep cuts off the two records we’ve done,” he told us – and the band kept their promise in an epic set. Vintage performances of the intense and often dark songs followed – Rise And Fall, a version of Remedy that showcased Iain’s voice to perfection, adding regular guest Kris Douglas (Dr Wook) in for Home.
“It’s time to waltz you to the end of the world,” Iain said, The Weight coming next in a very slow stomping beat that reflected the words “feel the heavy load” as the finish loomed closer, Don’t Speak, then all the thanks. “This is the end,” Iain jokingly quote-sang The Doors, then said “This is it. We’ll be playing again, just not here. We are you, you are we, we are all outsiders,” Iain quoted the band’s mantra.
Then last song was the epic and hopeful Human Condition, the phrase “It’s part of us!” repeated by the band and the crowd and we could have been talking about the Ironworks …
