The maudlin, magical world of Celtic Connections

Is it possible to find a common thread running through the finest Scottish music? If pushed, one might identify a quality of ecstatic melancholy, a rapturous yet fateful romanticism, in everything from the Incredible String Band to the Cocteau Twins, the Blue Nile to Frightened Rabbit, Simple Minds to Mogwai. The Jesus & Mary Chain have a song called ‘Happy When It Rains’, which seems about right.

There were moments during the launch event for Celtic Connections, Glasgow’s annual and much-valued winter celebration of roots music from Scotland and far beyond, when this bittersweet admixture of moods was thrillingly conjured up. At other times, it simply felt a little contained, even now and again flirting with that lethal old enemy, the Scottish Cringe.

Opening concerts are notoriously tricky affairs. The task of somehow distilling the essence of an entire festival into a single evening of entertainment practically guarantees an uneven programme: too polite, too ambitious, too earnest, too long. Titled ‘Glasgow 850’ in deference to the city’s year-long celebrations marking its 850th anniversary as a burgh, this was best viewed as a speedy aural bar crawl along the avenues and alleyways of Scottish music – albeit Scottish music unplugged and largely defanged. Befitting the roots remit, the spirit of the evening was predominantly acoustic in flavour.

The Celtic part of the equation was delivered happily enough. The Glasgow Trad Collective joined forces with an excellent house band to supply versatile backing to reels, jigs, indie-pop, violin concerto, bagpiping, Sufi devotionals, Galician horn-blowing, couthy ballads and political protest. On home turf, Billy Connolly’s dewy-eyed ‘I Wish I Was in Glasgow’ – sadly not sung by the Big Yin but by Roddy Hart – the Bluebells’ timeless ‘Young at Heart’ and Paul McKenna’s ‘Home’ were the equivalent of open goals; musical tap-ins.