YOUR GUIDE TO EDINBURGH'S FESTIVALS
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
ED2011 4/5 Reviews ED2011 Music Reviews
Eliza Carthy Band
By Ellie Blow | Published on Wednesday 31 August 2011
Eliza Carthy, carrying a cup and saucer, strides out on stage. “It looks like tea but actually it’s gin,” she says, before proceeding to tell a typically bawdy anecdote about Billy Bragg. Then, cuing the music, she opens her mouth to sing, and a voice emerges like honey-soaked gravel. Her tell-tale Yorkshire twang firmly grounds the ethereal songs, which, though Carthy describes them as “miserable… hinting at something rude”, actually cover subjects as disparate as Friday night fights and, er, donkey-riding primates. Carthy and her band are a mass of brilliant contradictions: they are just as beautiful as they are ridiculous, just as funny as they are “miserable”, but at no point is this show anything less than great.
The Queen’s Hall, 12 Aug, 7.30pm (9.00pm), £14.00 – £16.00, fpp204.
tw rating 4/5
[eb]
