Rowan Ross
Album: Second Fiddle
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.rowanross.com

For the last few years, Rowan has become a familiar figure on Glasgow's alternative folk and jazz scene, both performing his own songs and sometimes also playing fiddle for others. Second Fiddle is Ross's debut release, and forms a fairly laid-back collection of songs and instrumental pieces written over the past few years. As a musician, he displays influences from folk, jazz, blues and roots musics and weaves them into a stimulating aural blend. As a songwriter, perhaps I hear Gerry Rafferty most among his inspirations, most especially in the melody lines and chord progressions of songs like Another Book.

Effectively, the disc represents a kind of life-journey, which takes us from the freewheeling escapism of Let It Go through the darker Nursing Home and the more wistful Under Tide to the expression of friendship (the title track) via a pair of contrasted instrumental numbers, the gently funky jazz of Liquid Diamond and the gently traditional air of Eleanor Ross. Ross's singing voice is pleasing, although the occasional swoop into a falsetto register can be a mite disconcerting. The album title refers primarily to Ross's use of two different instruments (one dark in colour and the other light), but probably also references the unassuming nature of his musical personality when in consort with other performers. Having said that, he manages to exert his own musical signature over the support crew he's gathered for this disc, which includes Angus Lyon (accordion), Alyn Cosker (drums), Gillian Fleetwood (clarsach), Rosie Townhill (cello), Louis Abbot (marimba) and Rick Standley (double bass), and the whole proceedings are superbly engineered by Iain Hutchison.

All in all, it's one of those records which engages from the start, and which you feel you'd have liked to go on longer or expand (it lasts less than 35 minutes), but therefore also makes you curious to learn whether Ross was short of material.

David Kidman