ITS resemblance to Sade's Your Love is King notwithstanding Girlfriend is one of the best tunes to emanate from Scots songwriting since Roddy Frame's How Men Are. It was a fitting triumph for the current season in Stirling where an acoustic nightmare somehow becomes a reverberating dream that celebrates Scottish contemporary songwriting. Pay attention Historic Scotland - this is becoming one of the most important gigs on the national round.
Previously lacking commercial edge, Chris Thomson's new writing is distinct from former favourites like Angel On Ruskin, but there is a tonal sameness about every lineup of The Bathers (and this is the most muscular yet) which does a fey Celtic disservice to his songs.
That is true when they become a backing group for Jerry Burns who joined them halfway through, her scheduled performance paralleling Andy White's introduction, itself a consequence of yesterday's traffic disruption, the work of ''his misguided countrymen''.
Ultimately both White and Thomson are guilty of spreading that Van the Man Astral Weeks groove rather too thinly. Kelvingrove Baby - last night's closer and the title track of the latest and best ever Bathers album is a case in point. More focus please and I don't mean that Dutch prog nonsense. The danger is that this band at full tilt would swamp the delicacy of Chris Thomson's songs.
More importantly however, now that objecting landowner Kenny Logan has become a try-scoring machine for Wasps, surely it is time to resurrect the plan for a vast outdoor event at Manor Powis. Stirling has never been in finer fettle to put its name on the musical map.
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