For 30 years and more, Jim Malcolm has been the ultimate Scots troubadour, taking the traditional songs of Scotland and his own prizewinning compositions to all corners of the UK and around almost every part of North America. His is ‘one of the finest singing voices in Scotland in any style’ (Living Tradition), and his mellifluous guitar playing is the perfect accompaniment. He plays harmonica to a standard you’ll rarely hear. But now he has another trick up his sleeve, as his wife Susie joins him on stage. You may have heard her harmonies on many of Jim’s 11 solo CDs, but as the couple become empty nesters Susie is joining him on the road. An award-winning traditional singer herself, Susie was among the first women ever to win a Bothy Ballad singing competition. She sings songs from the North East of Scotland and has a penchant for old ballads.

The Berries is their second album together, taking up the story from their delightful debut Spring Will Follow On. Songs from the travelling tradition feature strongly, as the CD opens with Belle Stewart’s ‘Berry Fields of Blair’ and finishes with a jaunty ‘Twa Gadgies’. Between these earthy and elemental songs from Angus, Jim and Susie sing their way round Scotland. The fishing traditions of the East Coast are represented by Ewan MacColl’s ‘Come A’ Ye Fisher Lassies’; the farming traditions of the North East by ‘Guise o Tough’ and ‘Lonely in the Bothy’ (written by Susie’s dad, Charlie Allan); and representing Glasgow is Hamish Henderson’s salute to Red Clydeside, ‘John Maclean’s March’. Robert Burns is in there too, and close harmonies make his post-Culloden plea of ‘Lassie Lie Near Me’ hard to resist; but Robert Tannahill’s ‘Gloomy Winter’ lightens the mood. ‘The Banks of Inverurie’ indulges Susie’s love for the old narrative ballads, while Karine Polwart’s ‘John C Clark’ brings the CD back to modernity with endearing humour.

Jim and Susie Malcolm’s sound is built on Jim’s DADGAD guitar and sensitive harmonica, but the CD also features stellar Pete Clark on fiddle, exquisite Marc Duff on whistles and bodhran, and multi-instrumentalist supremo Dave Watt on keyboard. Together they have made an album of Scots song which bristles with authenticity, energy and poise, and which you’ll want to listen to over and over again.

“Malcolm has one of those pure, warm folk voices (two parts Archie Fisher, one part Dick Gaughan) that one never tires of listening to.” Dirty Linen

www.jimmalcolm.com