Celtic Connections review: The Bothy Band, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Four decades is a long time between gigs, as they say, so this appearance by Ireland’s fabled Bothy Band, seemingly in their first public concert since they disbanded in 1979, bore a perhaps unfair burden of expectation. By and large, though, they cracked it.

A delighted audience roar greeted the first, familiar strains of their opening reel, The Salamanca, sounding nimbly on flute, fiddles and pipes before the rhythm section joined in. Other well-loved sets prompted similarly enthusiastic responses: Matt Molloy’s flute introduced a jig set that slipped into the purposeful Kid on the Mountain; another dramatic jig episode saw Paddy Keenan’s uilleann pipes skip from the Pipe on the Hob into the Hag at the Churn, fiddlers Paddy Glackin and Kevin Burke powering along as Donal Lunny’s bouzouki, guitarist Seán Óg Graham and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill’s trademark clavinet generated that legendary drive.

It was a jubilant return. Only occasionally did their engine room threaten to blunt the keen edge of the front-liners, and one missed, inevitably, the distinctive Gaelic song harmonies Ní Dhomhnaill used to weave with her late brother, Mícheál Ó Domhnaill. Tríona’s delicate upper register sounded uncertain at times in the few songs featured, although she had the audience with her all the way in her sprightly encore of the wry Do You Love an Apple, before her clavinet chimes heralded yet another hallowed set, The Green Groves of Erin, to leave us on a high.

Landed with the unenviable role of support, singer-guitarist Kris Drever – “it was the only way I could get in” – in fact turned in a short, admirable set, featuring dexterous guitar work and such idiosyncratic songs as If Wishes Were Horses and the haunting “lunar eye” perspective of I’ll Always Leave the Light On.