The High Kings Queen's Hall Edinburgh 17th June 2023 Review
The High Kings were at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight, their only Scottish date on their current High Kings XV Tour which celebrates 15 years of the band and their music. With a mixture of traditional Irish songs, more contemporary songs, new songs written by the band and more than a few stories (maybe as many to tell if you let them as there are to be told about the High Kings of Ireland themselves), the band took to the stage to much applause from the audience.
Opening their set with a boisterous rendition of “The Irish Rover” that was immediately matched by the audience, the High Kings set the tone for the rest of the evening by giving their fans exactly what they had come out to hear and do it all in good spirits.
Traditional songs like “Will Ye Go Lassie Go (Wild Mountain Thyme)”, “Whiskey In The Jar” and “The Black Velvet Band” have that ability to instantly connect many people together to share something in common that is almost instinctive, some desire to reconnect to their roots, and the High Kings with a mixture of these songs and a high energy performance made the most of that ability to bring everyone in the room together with their music tonight.
Traditional songs are of course often far more than some sort of sugar coated nostalgia for times gone by, they are often the written records of true events that people in authority have tried to “white-wash” or even remove from history and we have writers both old and new to thank for handing down these stories and making sure that they are told to people. Sometimes that history is intentionally obvious as in the song “Grace” written in 1985 by brothers Frank and Seán O'Meara. This powerful song about artist Grace Gifford who married Joseph Mary Plunkett in the chapel at Kilmainham Gaol just a few short hours before his execution by a firing squad in 1916 has a resonance with the past that only music can really provide. By contrast the song “The Town I Loved So Well (written by Phil Coulter) sounds at first a basic song about longing for ones home, but listen to the lyrics as this song progresses and it has so much more to say in a few short lines.
Currently the High Kings band line up consists of Finbarr Clancy, Darren Holden, Brian Dunphy and Paul O’ Brien, and the band have a new album “The Road Not Taken” coming out in a few days’ time. This is a bit of a departure in format from them as they have been writing new songs for it and obviously a few were on the set list this evening and “Connemara Bay”, “Chasing Rainbows” and “1845” prove that they have that elusive knack of making a new song sound like it has been around for a long time. Also on the set list was the band’s new single “The Streets of Kinsale”.
Scottish songwriters featured tonight too with “Caledonia” by Dougie MacLean and perhaps one of the best anti-war songs ever written, “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” by Eric Bogle, the latter being appropriate as the band have recently performed in Australia and New Zealand and will be returning there soon.
At the end of the evening, The High Kings very much reminded me of a pub band, and I mean that here with the greatest of respect to them as Irish pubs and Irish music are inseparably interwoven with one another and you get that feeling of warmth and good humour in their performances that you would expect from musicians performing in a much smaller and more intimate performance space.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Opening their set with a boisterous rendition of “The Irish Rover” that was immediately matched by the audience, the High Kings set the tone for the rest of the evening by giving their fans exactly what they had come out to hear and do it all in good spirits.
Traditional songs like “Will Ye Go Lassie Go (Wild Mountain Thyme)”, “Whiskey In The Jar” and “The Black Velvet Band” have that ability to instantly connect many people together to share something in common that is almost instinctive, some desire to reconnect to their roots, and the High Kings with a mixture of these songs and a high energy performance made the most of that ability to bring everyone in the room together with their music tonight.
Traditional songs are of course often far more than some sort of sugar coated nostalgia for times gone by, they are often the written records of true events that people in authority have tried to “white-wash” or even remove from history and we have writers both old and new to thank for handing down these stories and making sure that they are told to people. Sometimes that history is intentionally obvious as in the song “Grace” written in 1985 by brothers Frank and Seán O'Meara. This powerful song about artist Grace Gifford who married Joseph Mary Plunkett in the chapel at Kilmainham Gaol just a few short hours before his execution by a firing squad in 1916 has a resonance with the past that only music can really provide. By contrast the song “The Town I Loved So Well (written by Phil Coulter) sounds at first a basic song about longing for ones home, but listen to the lyrics as this song progresses and it has so much more to say in a few short lines.
Currently the High Kings band line up consists of Finbarr Clancy, Darren Holden, Brian Dunphy and Paul O’ Brien, and the band have a new album “The Road Not Taken” coming out in a few days’ time. This is a bit of a departure in format from them as they have been writing new songs for it and obviously a few were on the set list this evening and “Connemara Bay”, “Chasing Rainbows” and “1845” prove that they have that elusive knack of making a new song sound like it has been around for a long time. Also on the set list was the band’s new single “The Streets of Kinsale”.
Scottish songwriters featured tonight too with “Caledonia” by Dougie MacLean and perhaps one of the best anti-war songs ever written, “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” by Eric Bogle, the latter being appropriate as the band have recently performed in Australia and New Zealand and will be returning there soon.
At the end of the evening, The High Kings very much reminded me of a pub band, and I mean that here with the greatest of respect to them as Irish pubs and Irish music are inseparably interwoven with one another and you get that feeling of warmth and good humour in their performances that you would expect from musicians performing in a much smaller and more intimate performance space.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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