‘I’m done with school,’ she’d said. ‘It’s all part of my old life. I need to grow up now.’

He fried them eggs for breakfast, then they walked out around the bay that the bothy sat on, looking out across the Summer Isles, the sea, beyond.

‘It’s so beautiful here,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere this beautiful. It feels like a good place to be.’

‘Aye, it does me well enough,’ he said, trying to dodge the implication he thought he detected. ‘Do you not remember the Isle of Skye, though, Cliodhna? The time we spent there, every summer? No, you were just a baby really.’

‘I remember being on a beach like this one, with you and my dad. I remember the sea being big. But that could be Girvan, couldn’t it? When I was a kid?’

‘It could. But you don’t see as much of the sea in Girvan. Not like this. Do you remember any of the songs we used to sing to you?’

He started out, hesitantly.

‘There’s nought but care on every hand

In every hour that passes, o –

‘Like this one?

‘What signifies the worth o’ man

And ’twas na for the lasses, o.’

Donald had never been the singer, really. He knew fine his voice wasn’t the strongest, couldn’t sustain the longer notes, worried too much about where to take the breaths. He hid his face from the girl, sank his eyes on the horizon, moved plainly through the tune.

Her voice was husky, like she hadn’t used it much in a while, but she came in on the fourth verse, note perfect, both of them gradually growing louder.

Q Magazine, September 2007

The Northern Lass

Clio Campbell

VEY RECORDS

Things the world was not waiting for: an album of obscure Scottish folk songs by a washed-up Nineties pop star, replete with guest appearances by various nonentities and hangers-on scraped from the very edges of the grime scene. As weirdly jarring as it is deeply uncool, this cross-genre experiment by one-time ‘Rise Up’ popstrel Clio Campbell, getting back in touch with her Scottish roots, crashes and burns painfully.

It’s a shame because, unlike other female singers from the past, who tend to drop a few octaves after they’ve passed forty, Campbell’s voice still demonstrates that clear, soaring beauty that thrilled those of us who loved her guest vocals with the likes of Primal Scream and Belle and Sebastian back in the day. The stripped-down power of the almost a cappella ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, the randy Scottish bard’s love poem, becomes a powerfully sexy lesbian torch song in Campbell’s throat, lust and regret conveyed in each beautiful nuance. Perhaps her record company should have steered her towards a straightforward folk album – at the very least it would have saved this rock reviewer from having to wade through all those kitschy screeching Scottish fiddles.