They said that the Edinburgh Fringe might never be the same again, after Covid curtailed it for a couple of years, but 2022 seemed like a return to form, from a Clash point of view: a bunch of musicians taking to comedy stages, diverse theatrical tributes to rock legends, and lots of uncategorisable stuff in between. It’s a unique few weeks.
First up, a couple of shows with a similar-sounding theme, but which couldn’t be more different. How to Record the Greatest Album of All Time is by Tom GK, a former broadsheet music critic who developed hearing issues, largely overcame them, took guitar lessons and turned to songwriting. Here he tells that story, and creates a decent onstage album to accompany it. The best bits are his breakdowns of classic song structures, however: a note-perfect explanation of Everything in its Right Place – why the title fits perfectly too – has one teen Radiohead-head in the front row in raptures.
—
—
The veterinary college turned culture village Summerhall is a good place to catch stuff, year-round (the likes of Efterklang, Deerhoof and Cate le Bon played Fringe one-offs). At the Roundabout tent every day is Maimuna Memon, who’s already featured on these pages recently: as Munah, she released debut single Calling just before the Fringe. It’s been quite a month, as her show Manic Street Creature has been getting tremendous reviews: it also involves a fictional album-recording session, but here the diverse songs all relate to her character Rhia’s move to London, and how a relationship survives huge mental health challenges. Memon is extraordinary throughout.
Onto those music legends getting on-stage tributes, and they’re not always real. This is Memorial Device is a theatrical reworking of a popular novel by David Keenan about an alt-rock outfit from Airdrie, Memorial Device, who were more than just a cult band; a proper cult, almost. The idea here is that we’re all at a sort of lecture about them by an old fanzine writer, played by Paul Higgins, who gets transcendental while telling this story. The band’s ominous sound is created by Stephen McRobbie, aka Stephen Pastel, of Glasgow legends The Pastels. It’s a trip for the audience too.
—
—
Church of The Fall, meanwhile, is the real thing, a love letter to Mark E Smith and his many cohorts by Stephen Titley, who reveals his own conversion from organised religion to the disorganised worship of this remarkable band. It’s clearly aimed at fellow Fall fans but is a relatable exploration of band worship generally – Stewart Lee showed up and recommended it, while Titley offered ex-Fall members offered a free pint on attendance. Let’s hope they didn’t all take it up; the Fringe is expensive enough as it is.
Another shift in tone, Aberdeen is an intense, in-the-round rhyming eulogy to Kurt Cobain, Aberdeen in this case being the one in Washington. The award-winning comedian/storyteller Cassie Workman is the creator and narrator, travelling back in time to try to save the troubled singer, while conversing with his ghost – but how do you save a soul like Cobain’s? It’s a fascinating look at the singer’s life, death, and legacy.
—
—
A couple of amazing shows from moonlighting musicians, now. Caitlin Cook is otherwise known as the singer-songwriter Candid Bandit back in Brooklyn, but here she’s on a comedy stage with a wicked concept. The Writing on the Stall is a series of songs with lyrics all taken from toilet cubicle graffiti, and as you can imagine the tone shifts along the way, getting seriously dark in places. But mostly it’s hilarious.
Hopefully having a happier time at the Fringe than she did in her previous musical incarnation, meanwhile, Emily Wilson’s show The Fix is a blisteringly frank account of her time as a young contestant on the US version of X-Factor. Wilson scraped through several rounds in the sort of torturously exploitative fashion that really shouldn’t happen to a 15 year-old, even if she did get to rub shoulders with Pharrell Williams and other luminaries. It’s a hell of a story, and she’s been nominated for Best Newcomer, which seems sort of poetic, a decade on.
Also turning to comedy this year, and eschewing music completely, is Grace Petrie. Not that the popular protest singer is just doing gags, in Butch Ado About Nothing. As the show title may suggest, Petrie wants to talk about gender roles, particularly her own, and it’s interesting to hear which groups have aggressively disagreed with her lyrics on that subject, over the years; not always the ones you’d think. It’s a fascinating hour, even without the tunes.
Her old tourmate Gecko is definitely singing though, at the gothic and apparently-haunted old pub Banshee Labyrinth. He mainly keeps it light and funny in the self-explanatory Man With a Guitar Plays Story Songs, it being two in the afternoon, but then shifts gear with his TikTok hit Laika, about the canine cosmonaut. It’s absolutely devastating. Tears? No, just scratching my eye mate…
—
—
Another convert to comedy stages, Andy McLeod bangs out a few songs along the way too. Anoint My Head – How I Failed to Make it as a Britpop Indie Rockstar is about his days on the outer rim of the scene that became Britpop. Now a promoter, his old band were The Pointy Birds, who had big Suede links but were pretty Pulp-like, McLeod suggests, particularly lyrically. They had a gag-loving manager too, who also decided to give live shows a go, regrettably: Ricky Gervais.
To conclude: a truly glorious mix of music and movement. Larkhall may sound like some grand old Edinburgh venue – the show is at Summerhall – but this is actually a piano futurist from Minnesota, which is an episode of Fargo we’d love to see. He walks on silently, sits at the open-fronted upright, begins to play and sets off a cascade of mind-bending images.
He’s got some self-made software called Otto linked up, which reacts to particular cues and can even create an appropriate poem, in response to his keys. It’s all dreamily impressive, although arguably the best bit is when things go momentarily wrong. At the start of one track, Larkhall has to stop, fiddle with the laptop, then admit that ‘programs get moody too’. All the most interesting music-makers do.
—
Words: Si Hawkins
