Rising star, Malcolm, tells her story with verve and panache, a pot pourri of styles all well contained in her grasp, both way from and back to her true calling.

Release Date: 18th November 2024

Label: Self -released

Format: CD / digital

The timing of this second solo release may just be perfect for this MG Alba Trads award winner, Scots singer of the year for 2022, not least as it bridges all the apparent fault lines that fracture any one simple image of her. For some she is the sweetly voiced linnet who can charm the roughest gigs in Scotland, yet to others she is the pulsating siren at the front of Niteworks, belting out strident anthems. Or in front of Glasgow jazz-folk collective, Fat-Suit. She is a paradox, and one she is keenly aware of herself. So, with that in mind, rather than a simple selection of songs, here she has chosen to offer a mixed media set, a portrayal of who she is, why and how that it all happened.

Her “journey”, if you will, mindful how that description can become a turn-off to many. Yes, there are songs here aplenty, but interspersed with spoken word expositions of explanation to fill out her palette. If it all sounds as if it could be very self-indulgent, well, let’s see.

Perfect timing?

Well, given she is currently on the road with Niteworks, as that band rounds off their final ever dates, with her rendition of John Riley rightly seen as a centrepiece of their show , now is the time to show what else she has to offer. Of course, she is 2nd gen Scots folk royalty, her father being Jim Malcolm, a onetime singer for Old Blind Dogs and still performing solo, and also with his wife, Beth’s mother, Susie. Indeed, he has also been known to play alongside his daughter, and their joint set at last years’s Wickham festival was received well.

The album comes in three acts; those of a pretension averse nature, should look away now, and avoid prejudging. Act One is Osmosis, and covers childhood. The first track is a medley of three trad standards, not that you would at first know it, given the wash of what sounds like synths and piano that beckons in the first, Battle Of Harlaw. Her voice is what grabs immediately, one of those pitch perfect vessels that can sound engineered to any ear used to studio manipulation. It isn’t, which makes the smoothness all the more astonishing, sliding effortlessly into your awareness, more so when double tracked, for harmony.

playground rhymes

The tempo ups just before Ally Bally Bee, a playground rhyme in my day, and with some expressive harp. The synth then expands across the whole soundscape , for a brief burst of Blackbird, before she then explains how these songs came to be in her consciousness: “these are my songs my beats, my rhythms“. Her speaking voice is as unctuous as the one she sings with, reminding me of my mother’s assurances that the best English spoke in the UK could be found in Inverness. Well, Perth, Beth’s home, isn’t that far away.

a cautionary tale

Hallowe’en offers a cautionary tale around trick and treat expectations being above just an outstretched hand. Like all the spoken pieces, it has a musical backdrop, flute and bodhran for this one, and introduces Young Edward, a traditional song performed traditionally, to piano and fiddle. Opening in Gaelic, she turns to Scots, if sufficiently broad as to have me finding the join difficult to discern. The backing is a lively canter and she has a fine set of musicians. Here it is Malcolm herself on piano, with the fiddle and accordion of Eryn Rae and Andrew Waite respectively. The guitar is Heather Cartwright, the bodhran Callum Convoy and the earlier harp was Laura Penman. Many of these are names already known to be similarly rising stars in the pantheon of Caledonian music.

a folkie sponge

A little more of her history as a “little folkie sponge” is followed by her arrangement of a Violet Jacob’s poem, Glory, to Tommy People’s The Beautiful Goretree. Voice and Cartwright’s deft guitar are nearly all that is included, some subtle keys and sinuous bass, David Bowden, adding some subsequent decking, before Rae brings her fiddle back, paired with the whistle of Tiernan Courell. Altogether, it is a dreamily beautiful track.

The final song in this section is Ghosted, which also outlines her burgeoning rejection of the traditions she was immersed in until that stage. An almost cocktail jazz confection, with some double bass the main accompaniment, bar the odd crash of cymbal and occasional tinkling piano. In style, if not sound, this could sit easily alongside any of Mary Coughlan’s more introspective efforts. The contrast is sublime.

turning on amy winehouse

Rejection, Act Two, is her conscious decision to move to Glasgow and “turn on Amy Winehouse instead“. It is still in full jazz chantoozie mode that she gifts Growing. It’s a decent song, and she does this style proud, but, y’know, jazz sirens are, comparatively, two a penny, and she fits far better her mix of folk and ‘tronica. As in she’s a good jazz singer but a great folk singer. Mark Scobbie now gets more than a cymbal to strike and the strings of the Sorcha Quartet ladle in an agreeable pathos. The country of A Man Who Loves The Worst Of Me follows her journey, I finding myself sticking to the sentiment of the sentence before, applied equivalently.

An accordion wafts into the next spoken piece, it, and the chance hearing of that melody rekindling her muscle memories folkward, beginning to tickle her conscience, signalling a wee burst of Bonny Glenshee. But not yet enough, Little Lows being a near perfect bridging post, an exquisite Sade-alike soul-jazz concoction that has me eating earlier assumptions. It also has some glorious electric piano from Alan Benzie.

Penultimate “rejection” song is the achingly disconsolate Rolling Stone, which, for all that, is an optimistic love song, which, if I get it correctly, is addressed to folk music, rather to any other more overt third party: “Here is a heart, here is my heart, and I’ll give it to you“. Again, it is Cartwright who provides the gorgeous guitar, with, this time, Benzie on an acoustic piano. These two consecutive songs are the unexpected highlights of this project.

no denying the dna

A trip to the Orkney Folk Festival bids farewell to her phase of folk-avoidance, a trip taken with her Dad that rekindled her roots. Her version of her Dad’s delivery of The Workers Song, unaccompanied, shows there is no denying her DNA. Jack Badcock adds a backing vocal, just as it closes.

Harp, the celtic harp, clarsach, underwrites her renewed dedication and devotion to her chosen muse, for the final act, of Folkmosis. Some captured speech from her Granny, adds a sense of grounding. The song that follows, I Am Bound, sees some atmospheric strings and electric guitar, this coming from album producer, Dorian Cloudsley. A particularly resonant version of Dick Gaughan’s Come Gies A Sang follows, propelled by Cartwright’s acoustic strum, with Courell now on flute. An excellent exemplar of energetic acoustic folk that, with Convoy’s vibrant bodhran, has all the (rapid) heartbeat required, with a brisk up of the tempo closing it, to underline the choice she has made.

The Mountain (Glen Artney) is the last song here, a shimmer of strings garbing her vocal, as it sweeps and soars, all over the available space. The piano is now in Cloudsley’s hands, with a cave of echo, that also surrounding Scobbie’s drums. If you didn’t know it, you’d think this was a great last lost Niteworks song, it taking a moment to remember the strings are real rather than synth driven. A few closing words, some running water and it is over. But, at (gulp) 27, one feels and certainly hopes this is merely a still early staging post in a hopefully long career.

spoken word appeal

I’ll be honest, the idea of all this spoken word did not initially appeal, with that prejudice hard to shake as I made my first exploratory listen. But, with time, each listen grabbed me more. The trick is to imagine this, as it was deigned, as a stage set piece of work. With an eye on the exquisite artwork, from David Fleck, that comes with the disc, that isn’t even all that hard to do, and soon the segues between speech and song become seamless. True, you can cherry pick the songs and skip the speech, should you feel inclined, but you would be missing both half the story and the entirety of the purpose.

Rather than a track from the album, here is something a bit different, from a year or two back, showing off both Malcolm’s voice and the intricate guitar play of Heather Cartwright, who features frequently acros this disc:

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