Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The maps that show the world the scale of the countries, the nations that fit into place, are normally completely wrong, at its most central point, the continent of Africa is so much more than is ever given respect for, not only in terms of its sheer size but its beauty, its endurance and its people. The same can be said for Scotland. Yes, from Shore To Shore its land mass is not as great as some, its near neighbour perhaps disproportionally larger in the ground it takes up, like an overweight, blustering man and his skinny put upon wife sharing the same bed, the strain on the relationship becomes too much. Yet Scotland itself is immense, it’s heart and soul is everything, and in its art, its stature across the board, is phenomenally endearing.
It is an endearing, social call in which Linsey Aitken and Ken Campbell bring to the world in their collaborative new album Shore To Shore.
Linsey Aitken and Ken Campbell are joined on the album by Ada Chau, Alasdair Robertson, Fiona Cuthill, Jim Lightbody, Nick Turner and Stevie Lawrence; it is a coming together of minds and of intricate performance that makes the album swing beautifully between melancholic realism and the charmed beauty of the imaginative movement, of the class shown in the Northumbrian pipes and the cello which whispers a serenade which is caught playfully on the wind.
Songs and moments such as So Far From Here, the superb Clydeside, Orkney Isles To Hudson Bay, Da Aristo, the marvellous and serene image filled The Bonny Ship Balclutha and See That Rainbow shine take the listener on a voyage, on an expedition, the voice of Scotland never far from the shores of deep introspection and searching, always searching for the truth of being heard, being understood. In the album’s final track, a reworking of Alasdair Robertson’s and the Ideal Band’s One People One World, that voice is not only heard but majestically considered, known to fill the heart and soul and without doubt, loved.
A ringing endorsement of traditional and original Scottish music in one album, an album that knows the pull of the tide of expression that goes from Shore To Shore, feeding information back and forth like a telegraph across the oceans, connecting people in which may have thought they were forgotten, left to fend for themselves; a pulse of recognition and love in which Traditional music never allows to happen.
Ian D. Hall