Scout Niblett – Broadcast, Glasgow 21/06/13

On her latest album It’s Up to Emma, Scout Niblett is probably as angry and honest as she’s ever been as she works her way through a broken relationship, betrayal and various other emotions with the raw passion we’ve become accustomed to from her over the years. She may be older and wiser than she was on 2001’s Sweet Heart Fever but the fire is still there – it’s just focused in a slightly different manner. It’s Up to Emma is her bluesiest record to date, and one of the most fully-formed despite the usual spare set-up of voice, guitar and drums. It also clearly lends itself to being played live, as this show at Glasgow’s Broadcast proved.

Augmented by a second guitarist and an outrageously good drummer (and he’d have to be to live up to Niblett’s own minimal-yet-demanding drumming) the set is plugged-in and visceral almost from the moment Niblett takes to the stage for the solo opening of a delta blues cover of ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ and the skeletal ‘It’s Time My Beloved’.

She’s finally joined by her band for the grunge-chug of ‘All Night Long’ and then the revenge fantasy of ‘Gun’; the latter is one of the great moments of the show, particularly for the moment when she sings “Your lies came so easily / I can’t believe you think they’d work on me / I watched you both hide out / Didn’t want the world to find out….HA!” before the song collapses into a stunning battle between Niblett and her guitarist. Both that song and ‘Second Chance Dreams’ deal with the agony of rejection and the battle to come to terms with still being attracted to the person or wanting to be with them in some way, and both songs deal with those feelings in the only way Niblett knows how – let it out, howl and make some noise. It’s intimacy writ large, with Niblett happy for the audience to accompany her on this personal journey.

Songs like ‘Nevada’ and ‘Let Thine Heart Be Warmed’, from 2007’s This Fool Can Die Now remain as powerful as they ever were, a glimpse to happier times in a relationship, but seem to take on an extra layer of grit thanks to the proto-power trio setup. First set-closer ‘What Can I Do’, which also closes It’s Up to Emma, is a lengthy and pleading song, mirroring the broken relationship as it threatens to fall apart while Niblett trades solos with her bandmate. It’d almost be enough to end the show there, but Niblett returns for a two-song encore, ending with the brilliantly meandering ‘Hot to Death’, simply reinforcing her power not just as a guitarist, but as an honest story teller.

Nothing much changes in the world of Scout Niblett; she’ll continue to make records the way she always has done, continue to be an excellent song writer and guitarist, and continue to perform brilliantly live, like she did here tonight. And if it’s all reliably good, why would we ever want anything else?

Photograph by Matthew McAndrew. See full gallery here.