Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh
4 stars
The last time Wreckless Eric, aka Eric Goulden, sang his 1977 should’ve-been hit single, (I’d Go The) Whole Wide World, around these parts was last summer at Edinburgh Castle, when he joined The Proclaimers, who’d covered it on their Life With You album. Henry’s may not be quite so grand, but given that the former Stiff Records recording artist lets slip late in the set that Edinburgh was where he and his wife of six months Amy Rigby had their first date, it’s a homecoming of sorts.
This joint low-key tour on the back of the pair’s eponymously named album is a perfect match of English punk troubadour spirit and Nashville garage band sentiment which Goulden dubs Home Counties and western. With only a couple of guitars, a keyboard and a lap-top onstage with them, it’s this veteran sense of self-deprecation that wins out over any accusations of old lag nostalgia, as the pair flesh out their wares beyond open mic night spareness.
As each accompanies the other’s material, there’s a melancholy to newer songs such as Another Drive On Saturday that’s clearly come with experience, but any leanings towards the maudlin are pricked by the comedy of Rigby’s Men In Sandals and Goulden’s shaggy-dog stories about how Nellie Olsen (or Little Nell as he calls her) off Little House On The Prairie is a fan. Both have impeccable back catalogues, and it’s clearly an equal partnership. “I’m a lucky man” says Goulden introducing (I’d Go The) Whole Wide World. “This is how we met.” Thirty-one years on, it sounds like vindication has come at last.
The Herald, November 10th 2008
ends
4 stars
The last time Wreckless Eric, aka Eric Goulden, sang his 1977 should’ve-been hit single, (I’d Go The) Whole Wide World, around these parts was last summer at Edinburgh Castle, when he joined The Proclaimers, who’d covered it on their Life With You album. Henry’s may not be quite so grand, but given that the former Stiff Records recording artist lets slip late in the set that Edinburgh was where he and his wife of six months Amy Rigby had their first date, it’s a homecoming of sorts.
This joint low-key tour on the back of the pair’s eponymously named album is a perfect match of English punk troubadour spirit and Nashville garage band sentiment which Goulden dubs Home Counties and western. With only a couple of guitars, a keyboard and a lap-top onstage with them, it’s this veteran sense of self-deprecation that wins out over any accusations of old lag nostalgia, as the pair flesh out their wares beyond open mic night spareness.
As each accompanies the other’s material, there’s a melancholy to newer songs such as Another Drive On Saturday that’s clearly come with experience, but any leanings towards the maudlin are pricked by the comedy of Rigby’s Men In Sandals and Goulden’s shaggy-dog stories about how Nellie Olsen (or Little Nell as he calls her) off Little House On The Prairie is a fan. Both have impeccable back catalogues, and it’s clearly an equal partnership. “I’m a lucky man” says Goulden introducing (I’d Go The) Whole Wide World. “This is how we met.” Thirty-one years on, it sounds like vindication has come at last.
The Herald, November 10th 2008
ends
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