YORK - OPERA HOUSE - 26.02.08
(York Press - 28th February, 2008)
On her new album sleeve, Barbara Dickson stands with a
dandelion puffball, and yet Time & Tide is surely not
the beginning of the dimming of the light.
At 60, the Dunfermline singer with a decade of pop
hits long behind her, is in better voice than ever,
bringing new poignancy to old favourites and investing
life's experience in both new compositions and her
revival of songs from pop and folk's back pages.
Her York concert is always a favourite on her travels:
one of her Ampleforth College-educated sons was in
Tuesday's audience, along with the family of Troy
Donockley, her producer, arranger, guitarist and
Uillean pipe player from Warter, near Pocklington.
Donockley's settings are rooted in Dickson's folk
beginnings, and from the opening Goin' Back - its
first line song off-stage by Barbara - songs
associated with The Byrds and The Beatles warm to her
embrace, just as willingly as the traditional Lowlands
Of Holland and Witch Of The Westmerland and her Lloyd
Webber ballads.
Amusing and informative in her banter, Dickson chooses
her set list with immaculate sense of tempo, momentum
and contrast, whether melting In The Bleak Midwinter
into George Harrison's Here Comes The Sun or
refreshing The Corpus Christi Carol and Answer Me or
making up for a pale reading of Bob Dylan's The Times
They Are A-Changin' with the closing encore of Across
The Universe. "Nothing's gonna change my world," she
sings, affirming that time and tide are not to be
feared.
(Charles Hutchinson)
