Scottish songs guaranteed to fill floors re-imagined

The Scottish songs guaranteed to fill floors and have revellers singing along.

The festive season my own home has also been full of the sounds of Scotland but with a slightly different emphasis.

Scottish Songs Observed by The Golden Tree has no shortage of hits or classics but its track listing is broader than usual and includes tunes which will have you scratching your head trying desperately to remember the original.

This project by The Bluebells’ Bobby Bluebell and Grahame Skinner of Hipsway strips away to the pop and rock arrangements and the bombast of the modern big-budget recording studios to throw the spotlight firmly on the songwriting skills behind some of the most beautiful songs Scotland has produced.

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They range from the traditional and familiar simplicity of Wild Mountain Thyme to the more startingly modern exploration of the afterlife presented by Talking Heads’ Heaven:

When this kiss is over, it will start again

Will not be any different, will be exactly the same It’s hard to imagine that nothing at all

Could be so exciting, could be this much fun

Old songs almost lost in hazy memories are re-evaluated

The ragged beauty of Donovan’s Catch the Wind seems clearer than it did back in the hippie days, although the treatment here is hardly a million miles away from the acoustic original.

The more radical reworkings reveal depths hidden by the original. Texas’ Black Eyed Boy seems so much darker and more supernatural that the Supremes-lite arrangement of the single even hinted back.

And the early Simple Minds’ Chelsea Girl emerges more profound and with more depth without the po-faced electro stylings which seemed so of their time in 1979.

There are those songs so achingly familiar, woven so intrinsically into the fabric of your life yet performed by artists you could not name if a gun was pointed at your head.

The dark deceit of infidelity is brutally portrayed in this version of I Should Have Known Better but I found it impossible to remember its writer/performer Jim Diamond far less his other UK solo hit Hi Ho Silver from 1986 or the TV show Boon for which it was the theme song.

Whether re-imagining pop classics or re-invigorating lost songs, The Golden Tree album stands as a testament to the standard of Scottish songwriting, which is sometimes overshadowed by the rowdy, drunken atmosphere in which many of these tunes are normally heard.

It made me think of other reworkings which totally changed the effect and deepened the meaning of well-known Scottish songs.

Here’s my top five:

Else Turp and Christopher Bowers-Broadbent: My Heart’s in the Highlands

A spooky reading of the Burns poem, with an eerie, almost spectral vocal rendered with a single note, and a distinctly strange organ backing. I’d never heard it before it pitched up on a free Mojo magazine CD compiled by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which should give you some idea of its musical universe.

Karine Polwart: Dignity

Deacon Blue’s epic, which concentrates more on its human storytelling aspects than the massive emotional climaxes of the original, and yet somehow still packs an emotional resonance which reduces you to tears about halfway through.

Martyn Bennett: Blackbird

This song from Bennett’s magical and marvellous Grit, captures the longing and love portrayed in a traditional Scottish folk song with a mixture of electronics and traditional instrumentation and a captivating, authentic vocal by Lizzie Higgins. The result is a highlight of what is a towering achievement for Scottish music.

Nirvana: Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam

The lords of grunge covered this song by Scottish band The Vaselines on their MTV Unplugged in New York show in 1994, although they renamed it from the original Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam. Supposedly a parody of the Christian children’s hymn I’ll Be a Sunbeam. During the MTV show, Kurt Cobain introduced it as “an old Christian song, I think. But we do it The Vaselines’ way”.

Runrig: The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

The Scottish band’s performance of this traditional song has become the definitive version. I think it fair to say I have never attended a wedding in Scotland during which it has not signalled the end of festivities.