Music

REVIEW: Sermanni, Abbott, Ross, Fleetwood – ‘These things stay with you …’

Under Canvas, Eden Court | Rachel Sermanni (and Louis Abbott)/ Adam Ross (and Gillian Fleetwood) | Inverness | Sunday, August 23 | 2pm

by Margaret Chrystall

Songwriter and performer Rachel Sermanni’s experiences, stories and changes transform by a kind of alchemy into music and lyrics that lodge in your life.

Your first live Sermanni gig in the packed top floor Bothy of Hootannanys in Inverness was when you first heard Rachel’s Song To A Fox, a wild creature stepping down a railway track, sung to life by a voice always moving on since, digging deeper, getting stronger and shining with its own quirks.

At Sunday’s Under Canvas, a big rolling vibrato note – a pulsating change of pitch – came at you in a song from the Carrbridge songwriter’s latest album Dreamer Awake.

Sixth song of the set, Big Desire took the slightly threatening phrase “the desire to let you live” and made ‘live’ a big wobbling note – a thick clart of sound flexing back and forth, like a smear of colour rolling in waves through the invisible air. It scared me. It was theatrical. Operatic. A witch’s incantation, a curse, a warning. Did that oscillating note of Rachel’s come from a spontaneous impulse? Or to experiment? Just because? You worried at it as the song flowed on – brain and ears enjoying the challenge of a new Rachel Sermanni song heard for the first time.

Admiral Fallow’s Louis Abbott and Rachel made a winning combination of easy banter and music and added a sense of time passing through their songs at Eden Court.

Louis remarked before last song of the set, the early Admiral Fallow song Dead Against Smoking: “Rachel and I have been sharing stages since 2009… 2010?”

It’s a long time and as each accompanied the other subtly and instinctively in their four songs each, turn-about, parenthood was one of the life experiences both musicians have explored in their songs since those days.

Louis opened the set with Avalanche – from last autumn’s album First Of The Birds. The song documents his daughter’s first day – “saying your name for the first time is love”.

“What a joy!” Rachel commented, as if recalling her own two arrivals. The musicians launched straight into Rachel’s Dreamer Awake – the title song of her latest album, Rachel strumming on acoustic guitar, bending her knees with the rhythm and shaking her head slowly from side to side at one point as she sang.

In Louis’ Evangeline next, the voices contrasted effortlessly in his song about his new daughter’s birth and the profound difference she had made to him and his life. Rachel sang a line quietly which was gently repeated a second later by Louis – the two vocals making the “perfect balance” he referred to in the lyrics.

“Beautiful dancing!” Louis grinned afterwards towards the toddlers who – during the song – had been swaying around dancing at the front of the stage.

Rachel Sermanni and Louis Abbott sang four songs each at Under Canvas in the first of two shows. Picture: MC

“How are you guys?” Rachel asked the grown-ups. “What’s it like being Under Canvas – is it dry? It is always nice to be outdoors, to have the presence of a river across the road, listening in. And also the presence of tiddlers,” she said, referring to the many youngsters in the tent with their families enjoying the afternoon gig. “Also nice!”

The singer introduced her next song with background about how it came to be – but didn’t share the title – maybe One Life?

“I am describing this era as like the summertime of one’s life,” Rachel began. “And for some, including myself, that means entering into parenthood and summertime, it’s a very beautiful thing. There’s many blossomings and many burgeonings, many a beautiful thing to appreciate and smell – and frolicking!

“And also the summer can be, as we also all know, very hot and sometimes destructive. I feel like I wrote a lot of songs that dwell in maybe that precipice between summer being beautiful, but also wildfire-y. There are definitely wildfire-y moments in there.

“Then I thought ‘I’d love to record these songs’ and instead of trying to make it conceptual and bring a band in and explain the chaos of the summer of my life to them, so that they can evoke it in themselves, instead I just brought them to my house to record. And we recorded amidst the chaos – they couldn’t escape it,” she laughed. “The concept was real! It was fun and really, truly, I learned a lot. It’s about chaos and the creating of, in music.

“There are parts that you love so much, but in that same take, there was maybe a part that I would have turned down if I could, but I can’t. And I feel that is exactly what I wanted to depict.

“The song comes from this era – the record will be for ears next year – but I’ll sing this now. It’s about a first date. Since my two and a half year old was born, this is the first and only date we’ve managed!

“And for the second verse, maybe I should give it a warning. There is reasonably vivid imagery of birthing. Prepare yourselves …” she said as we laughed and instantly you were plunged into the song.

Dreamer Awake, Rachel’s sixth album, shortlisted for the Scottish Album Of The Year. Picture: MC

“Get in the car, we have the night… I’m going to roar like the ocean, birth like a holy cow … you are seeing the head, ‘Now push for the last time’ … This is one life …”

Rachel broke off to ask us: “Do you think you can sing that last part – ‘one life’?”

We could and used our improvised chorus as an extra layer to add a new texture to the music.

Rachel realised she had missed out a song, and laughed: “It didn’t want to be played at that moment, but it’s going to get played now!”

Big Desire – possibly about desperation, despair or the “recovering Catholic-ness” and the mark of things – like religion – “these things that stay with you”. Rachel spoke about making a practice of recycling the kind of sign of the cross holy water blessings her granny used to make at churches and crucifixes. Now repurposed by the singer crossing rivers. Maybe not with the sign of the cross, but with a nod – no “ornate sign” yet.

In passing, at a gig like this, you noticed the family moving past outside hand in hand, the man walking a dachshund on a lead, the dog with the squeaky ball that got Louis laughing. But mostly there were the songs that took all your attention, even when a light at the back of the stage seemed to start flashing in time – a cosmic message or a dying bulb?

During the gig, Rachel’s songs didn’t go back to all the earlier albums, like Louis’ Headstrong or his final one, Dead Against Smoking, with what he reckoned were lyrics he had to remember from 23 years ago.

Love and loss, finding a way to dream a “new life”, being transparent, honest, experimenting, mythologising yet being simple and raw at the same time – it was all in Rachel’s four songs – three from latest album Dreamer Awake and the new, maybe as-yet-untitled song. Birth included.

Her final song, Jacob, seemed to unfold with sorrow, regret at not being a better person, hooking you in with the wry weirdness of “Jacob says I should go back to when I was a monkey”. At times the singer’s soft, almost whispered vocal shifted into full-voice throttle with the melody, strummed guitar, chiming chorus, that killer line “If I loved you, you never saw me” – and a last chance to bring on the wonder.

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Adam Ross and Gillian Fleetwood in their afternoon set at Under Canvas. Picture: MC

Earlier there had been the chance to reprise the relaxed double act from summer 2024’s Under Canvas pairing of Nairn singer songwriter Adam Ross and Inverness harpist Gillian Fleetwood, both musicians based elsewhere these days.

It felt like a kind of homecoming for both with the music’s easy indie-folk-pop feel and the tent full with the receptive afternoon audience enthusiastically reacting to their music and between songs chat as they warmed us up from the 2pm start.

Real life happens to the friends. And they shared plenty with us, from Gillian’s new windows back in Glasgow, to a slightly unfortunate lapse in the first song from Adam’s previous album Littoral Zone.

It ground to a halt with forgotten words/chords and both left laughing with the audience quickly joining in, what with the song title – I Get It Wrong Sometimes.

“Ironically, that one is called …” Adam deadpanned. Then bluffed unconvincingly and with a rueful smile: “The mistakes are all pre-planned …”

Moving on to Adam’s new album, Bring On The Apathy, he played with the conventions of gig chat first.

“Do we have any apathetics in today?” and the audience loved responding in appropriate muted murmuring.

Swiftly, with gentle harmonies and harp accompaniment from Gillian, the new album’s Berkeley Street took us to bittersweet breakup-land, a place where Adam’s combination of heartbreak and laugh-out-loud wit thrives.

He sang: “A year of heavy snow when I thought that you might go, who’d have thought that I’d beat you to the punch … Berkeley Street in the Ja-aa-nuary heat.”

The new album songs Bring On The Apathy, I Never Thought You Couldn’t Not and Horizon followed – maybe false-start paranoia prompting Adam to tease that he was just going to double-check the chords before launching into Horizon…

“Can you tell we’ve both had the summer off?” Gillian said.

“What did you do?” Adam asked her. “I went to Estonia.”

“Sounds gorgeous! I had my windows done, I’m so excited to have the new seals,” Gillian said.

“Did you rehearse this stage chat, Gill?” Adam grinned and they both laughed.

Adam Ross’s set with Gillian included songs from his new album Bring On The Apathy. Picture: MC

Adam trailed a murder ballad after a quick soundman impression that made a little girl laugh, crazily enthusiastic.

“I feel Highland audiences love a murder ballad,” Gillian added, then felt she needed to protest to us: “It’s a compliment!”

Brambles is not just love gone bad. As Adam’s quirky lyrics unfolded, the story of Shirley from Banchory’s “bruises” are a mitigating factor when it comes to what’s hidden by undergrowth, as the song pans away at the end.

We stayed in album Littoral Zone’s territory for Free Will with sparkling harp and my second favourite line of the song “… like so many people I struggle with the blues … we see more clearly than other hues.”

Adam maybe got most of us Googling a new word, Apogee, for the song title and the line “Your love will stretch me to my apogee”. Then on, Adam telling us the story of last year’s possibly unlikely-sounding “synth pop single” from him – Drink The First Light – encouraged by C Duncan, producer and 2024 gig bandmate here at Under Canvas, which on this hearing had transformed lyrics, music and voice into dance gold.

Always surprising, Adam’s set had majored on last year’s album treating the capacity crowd to familiar treasures. But the prolific songwriter also tantalised with a healthy smattering of new album tracks from Bring On The Apathy in his set with Gillian – and it easily tempted a merch stall purchase or two afterwards.

No surprises finding the best song to end this warm gig. Littoral Zone’s final track The Going made a great set-finisher, as, heavy with regret and an almost hypnotic shell-to-the-ear tidal rhythm, Adam and Gillian chorused “It’s the going that breaks the heart.”

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