the sunday herald

ALBUM REVIEW - 'ALL THINGS REAL' BY LEON MCDERMOTT
FROM THE GLASGOW SUNDAY HERALD MARCH 12 '06

If you're a budding singer/songwriter, as Edinburgh-based
Steve Adey is, it takes a certain amount of that wonderful thing, chutzpah, to cover not only Bonnie Prince Billy's I See A Darkness,
but Bob Dylan's Shelter From The Storm, on your debut album.
Some would call it sheer folly.
The Bonnie Prince Billy cover sits in the shadows of Johnny Cash's
own version, but Adey's reading of Shelter From The Storm (one of the highlights of Blood On The Tracks) turns Bob Dylan's fable into a languorous piano ballad which owes as much to Leonard Cohen
and John Cale as it does to Saint Bob.
That Adey's own songs hold up in this context at all, let alone very
well, should have him wiping his brow in relief.
On tracks like The Lost Boat Song and Evening Of The Day, Adey channels the spirit of Smog, minus Bill Callahan's caustic take on dysfunctional relationships; elsewhere, there are hints of the late
Jeff Buckley's mournful tenderness.
Whether Adey's career will end up producing his own Shelter From
The Storm - give him a decade and maybe the end of a great love - remains to be seen. That he might be capable, though, is reason enough to start listening to him now. 4/5

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