King Creosote, Barbican Hall

In a career spanning just over a decade and a half, folk singer Kenny Anderson – better know as King Creosote – has released almost fifty albums. Two of them – Mercury Prize-nominated Diamond Mine (2011), produced in collaboration with electronic producer Jon Hopkins, and From Scotland With Love (2014), commissioned to accompany the 2014 Commonwealth Games – have achieved critical acclaim and relatively mainstream success.
And yet Creosote, who earlier this year sold out two nights straight at the Union Chapel, remains a sort of outsider artist, the vast bulk of his discography known only to his most devoted of fans. This would be a crying shame if it were not for the consciously small, local scale of his work – a 2013 album was released in support of the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Fife – that makes exploring his catalogue a journey in itself. Generally austere but occasionally ebullient, Creosote’s music is often steered by his guitar and his gift for the heart-stopping melody, almost always paired with deeply personal lyrics. Live, backed by a range of instrumentalists and backing vocals, it achieves a further richness, evocative of the classic singer-songwriters of the sixties and seventies.
This October, Creosote will perform at the Barbican Hall with a mixture of songs from From Scotland With Love and his voluminous back catalogue. That album – which almost reached the top 20 of the UK Album Chart, becoming by far his most popular release – accompanied a documentary film into Scotland’s history. The songs, which give voice to people from the past, are among his most diverse and distinctive. ‘For One Night Only’ has a spritely spring and widescreen openness, yet remains intimate through Creosote’s thick brogue and intimate lyrics, whilst opener ‘Something To Believe In’ is sparsely elemental enough to feel like a time honoured local ballad. There has never been a better time to step into Creosote’s world.