Bonnie Prince Billy Glasgow review - 'like a high-end campfire singaround'

This much anticipated show by Will Oldham aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy took the form of a high-end campfire singaround, conceived and rehearsed mere hours earlier.

As a serial collaborator over the past three decades, Oldham has many friends to call on from home and away but initially he created magic with the sparest acoustic backing.

Perched on a crate, his voice rang out exquisitely on Good To My Girls from Superwolves, his 2021 album with Matt Sweeney, before he reached back 20 years to New Partner, recorded in one of his previous incarnations as Palace.

Next to join the sedentary powwow was gifted drummer Alex Neilson of this parish for a cover of The Clark Sisters’ gospel belter Is My Living in Vain.

Oldham’s wyrd folk version could hardly be further from the original but was connected by a soulful thread. He followed this plaintive plea with his own desolate anthem I See A Darkness. Of all the instruments he might have called on for embellishment, the clarinet was among the least obvious but most inspired.

The ensemble grew as Irish singer/songwriter Nuala Kennedy and guitarist Eamon O'Leary joined the gathering. With the former first bonding with Oldham over port and brandy in Birnam, it was only appropriate to celebrate this wooded locale with a song about trees. Kennedy’s vocals and fluttering flute gave Willow, Pine and Oak the air of a pagan rite, while the clarinet added a tone akin to laughter on Queens of Sorrow.

Much of this latter half of the set was given over to songs from the latest Bonnie “Prince” Billy album, Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You, with keyboards completing the line-up, but there was an additional treat in the shape of a brand new song, Our Home, featuring a jazzy duet between flute and clarinet, just another delightful musical marriage in an evening of special encounters.