It’s a brand new year but it’s the same high quality tunery and tomfoolery down at the hall in 2013. Kicking off our new year programme were the most excellent Sienna and Woodenbox.

Woody Guthrie was well into his twenties before he took up his music box in earnest. Sienna don’t want to wait that long. Powered by Danny McAtear and Stella Reilly’s stunning vocals – like a super-charged Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris – Sienna mix original materials with right on the money cover selections to create a pitch perfect Americana soundscape. Old Crow Medicine Show’s ‘Wagon Wheel’ was a simple delight with harmonies that could cut glass and Danny McAtear’s performance of ‘This Love of Mine’ was as good a vocal performance as any heard we’ve heard at Letham Nights. There were times (especially with the introduction of Stella’s wonderful flute playing) that it seemed The Polyphonic Spree had sneaked into the wings and were giving it their full choral charms whilst at others Sienna upped the power output and it might have been Arcade Fire in full flow. An encore of Woodie Guthrie was a perfect touch. Bound for Glory? Hell yeah!

Make no mistake. Woodenbox are loud. Storming onto the Letham Nights stage with booming vocals, skin shredding drum strokes and rock riffs a-plenty Ali Downer and his boys gave the dancefloor a monster work-out. Fans of Speghetti Westerns must have been delighted with Draw The Line’s whistled finale calling to mind Ennio Morricone at his atmospheric best. Woodenbox combine elements of folk, rock and ska and deliver them all with a piratical zeal which can’t fail to excite. All this was topped off with a finale that got faster and faster and faster before a four on the floor stomp of an encore that got everyone up and stamping their feet.

Unlucky ’13? Not a bit of it.

Upcoming:

Woodenbox – BLC, Lerwick, Shetland – Friday 15 March

Sienna – PJ Molloys, Dunfermline – Saturday 16 February