Review of James Mackenzie the Inverness musician back in Inverness to play the Tooth & Claw

Back at the Tooth & Claw and Inverness from his home in Germany for the first time in a while, James Mackenzie seemed to be making a point of saying all the wrong things when he hit the stage with a set of new songs and familiar older ones transformed.

“I’ll start with a song nobody knows,” he introduced debut album lead track Heart’s On Fire, probably breaking the first rule of Gigging 101.

But even unfamiliar, the cheesily catchy song worked all the same. We were in.

“I know you’re not here for the music but just to see if I got fat and stuff,” he grinned out at us – and with former band members, family and his long-time co-songwriter Chris Gorman among those there for the gig, that teasing tone set the mood for the relaxed, warm and emotional feel of the night.

Before Where You Are Going from the debut album, James had revealed it was about moving away and “worrying it was going to go tits up”. Afterwards, he warned himself: “Just don’t start crying, James and make an a*se of yourself!”

And to be fair, there was something deeply moving about the gig – an old friend home again, good old days hanging in the air, the chance to share in the progress of a natural performer, the grade-A banter that always almost disguised the serious devotion of a true disciple of music.

Opening things up at the start of the night was Inverness singer songwriter Daniel Gunn with an acoustic set that made the most of his confident unfussy delivery and a vocal with a shivering vibrato it was hard to get enough of. Settle Down – a song Daniel told us would be released as a single some time in the future – had a lyric to harpoon tiny hooks firmly into your imagination “You can howl at the moon, you can stare at the sea”.

A crackling lead didn’t bother him – it was changed and what was definitely not a love song defied the bland world of ‘lurve’ for my song of the set in Leaving You Girl, a feisty break-up spell to split with a spendthrift ‘cold and heartless’ lover.

Chris Finn or Hospital Corner from Leith opened by tipping his hat to tour host James – “Most of you are probably aware he is fantastic and still is.”

Chris’s set came from somewhere equally special though maybe a universe darker, on the outer limits where demons worry away at natural laws – as in The Ink Won’t Take To The Page or the unsettling Active Passive. A sublime vocal tested itself and got a gold star and there was a wry take on anything predictable – “the time doesn’t heal, it just shortens my life” or “In a flash of light the thought you just had is gone”. Also Hospital Corner is a specialist in the sniggeringly cliché-puncturing song intro: “I also have a song that will probably be a single and it will be out some time between now and the end of the Planet Earth.”

Can’t wait.

High-spots of James’s set inevitably included the audience participation and the passionate way his audience took up the singalong challenges James imposed best in Closer, maybe, and it even turned out we were great whistlers.

New song Air We Breathe had one of those winning choruses to top off the set. It led without the usual encore-pantomime straight into the only song any encore could be for James – The Boat Song.

All on its own, transformed, loosened down and given a glorious understated performance from the German exile, all on its own it showed how far this Inverness musician has travelled. MC