Leith Depot, Edinburgh
Four stars
“Does anyone know what they’re doing?”
This is a question posed by Callum Easter as the first headline act to play the all-new Leith Depot. Given that Edinburgh venues don’t exactly open every day, Easter’s question works on several levels, as Leith Depot moves its live music operations into an adjacent ground floor unit next to its popular community centred bar.
Having survived a proposed demolition that would have seen the end of both the bar and its former upstairs space that had become one of Edinburgh’s most significant grassroots venues, and then forced to navigate assorted Covid induced lockdowns, Thursday’s official opening night resurrection was a considerable show of strength.
First up was Romanian Radio 3 favourite, Lizabett Russo, whose mix of traditional folk stylings played on a vintage acoustic guitar and wedded to vocal loops made for an ethereal and charming form of chamber pop.
Wielding an accordion and accompanied by a three-piece band that adds texture and groove, Callum Easter’s raw bon mots come on somewhere between Jimmy Shand and Suicide. Drawing largely from his 2021 album, System, and following two recent dates in the much larger Queen’s Hall, Easter’s primitive rock and roll boogie punctuated by martial drums and funky flute is equally at home in the living room sized shop-front where he unleashes his anthems in waiting.
Leith Depot’s opening weekend also featured a new Friday night club, Vitamin C, hosted by radio DJ Vic Galloway and The Phantom Band’s Andy Wake, with a performance by electronic duo Maranta, while Saturday features the return of indie troubadour Andy White. If this all bodes well for the future of the venue itself, judging by Easter’s gauntlet throwing opening gambit, it might also have found itself a new local hero, who knows exactly what he’s doing.
The Herald, January 20th, 2023
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