It feels a little strange reviewing a CD titled ”Scotland is Free” a few months after the Scottish people voted ”no” in the referendum about breaking free from Great Britain. But in defence of Mr Morrison I must admit the CD was recorded and released well before the referendum.
Hugh Morrison is another of those performers who have carried on for many years, released a number of CDs and played in numerous group without catching my attention. He sings, plays the accordion and writes songs. On “Scotland is Free” he has written five of the 12 songs plus a short instrumental that is a part of the closing set.
For this record Morrison has collected a band of eight fellow musicians including drums, bass, banjo, fiddle, guitars and whistles. They end up sounding like a less boisterous version of The Pogues, almost always with a driving rhythm, often with a marching snare drum, but not quite creating the mayhem they sometimes manage. Morrison has the same type of voice as Shane McGowan, but a little more controlled and always in tune. So you might say this is Scotland’s answer to The Pogues.
As I wrote five of the songs are by Hugh Morrison, and they fit in very well with the traditional songs. If you did not know which ones they were you would easily mistake songs like “Highland Girl” and “Dun Eistein” for traditionals.
Apart from “Among the Proddy Dogs & Papes” by Alastair Hulett the rest are folk songs. Morrison has put together a mix of well-known songs like “Nova Scotia” and “Tramps & Hawkers” with ones that are new to me, like “Willie´s Gone To Melville Castle”. He treats them all well, although his version of “Parting Glass” is a little too fast for my liking.
In total it is quite an entertaining CD. The key word is speed, only two slow songs, so there is plenty to tap to your feet to, and it would do well as background music in a pub or at the party. For people looking for new songs to play themselves it could also be used as a source, and I have discovered in works well in the car stereo. But Morrison’s voice takes some time to get used to, and there are moments when the band is not as tight as you would wish, but I guess that goes with the genre. Not a CD that will end up in “Best of 2014”-lists or go down in history, but I guess that goes for most CDs that are released.
(Hugh Morrison, 2014)
