Due to Covid restrictions, Allison Russell‘s scheduled solo performance for Celtic Connections 2022 was cancelled alongside many other performers. Prior to this, her last appearance at the festival was as Birds of Chicago (alongside husband J T Nero) in 2019. Since then, her solo career has taken off, demonstrated by two much-lauded albums, Outside Child (2021) and The Returner (2023), the latter receiving four Grammy nominations as well as recently winning International Artist of the Year & International Album of the Year at the UK Americana Music Awards. She was also a member of Our Native Daughters alongside Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Amythyst Kiah, whose remarkable album Songs of Our Native Daughters was released in 2019. For this Celtic Connections show, she was accompanied by her powerhouse all-female Rainbow Coalition band, featuring Elenna Canlas (keyboards), Caoimhe Hopkinson (bass), Caoi de Barra (drums/percussion), Joy Clark (guitars) – a collective both musically and in a shared commitment to end all forms of oppression.
A plaintive refrain played by Allison on clarinet, with rolling percussion, opens proceedings on the song Hy-Brasil (from her first solo album Outside Child) written as tribute to her maternal Scottish Canadian grandmother and imagining travel to a mythological island off Ireland’s west coast as a place she escapes the abuse of her childhood. A march tempo and understated accompaniment leave the singing fully exposed, the band adding powerful backing on the chorus, clarinet seeing the song out. 4th Day of Prayer has an insistent, almost menacing, slow groove, the words graphically recounting the abuse of Allison’s teenage years. A particularly funky backing carries Springtime, and Stay Right Here, a straight-up dance-floor gem.
Things shift as Allison gets her banjo out for Eve Was Black and then keeps hold of it for Superlover (a Birds of Chicago song), the first of three songs played without amplification. The acoustic interval had an engaging, busking-like quality – Persephone’s memorable chorus sounded glorious, sung virtually a capella, and Joy Clark took the spotlight on Lesson. The soul-sounding Nightflyer showed the band at their high energy best on another melody that sticks in your head, followed by Demons, the audience grabbing the opportunity to join in the call-and-response repeated title chorus. The wonderful You’re Not Alone (a song Allison sang on Songs Of Native Daughters and subsequently recorded with Brandi Carlisle, who she described as ‘kicking open the door’ for her), with its banjo-driven Latin-esque tempo, brought an unforgettable evening of first-rate music and inspiring resilience and hope themed songs to an end.
