Waking Up and Smelling the Coffee Table

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Review

Alex Cornish

Alex Cornish has been tipped as a hot new talent in Edinburgh; tonight he and his band are playing at The Ark, the latest venue opened to accommodate the capital’s rapidly expanding live music scene.

Opening tonight is Kim Edgar, the latest in a long line of acoustic singer-songwriters whose work is pleasant enough yet wholly forgettable. In a world increasingly overfull of pub-meets-café venues its easy to see why there is a thriving market for this incredibly bland form of music, but with a thousand or more sound-a-likes up and down the country churning out songs with
so few discernable differences that it all fades into the background.

Cornish, on the other hand, manages to bring something new to the singer-songwriter formula. Having previously composed scores for
television shows, Cornish has mastered the knack of adorning his songs with Astral Weeks-esque exuberant string refrains and writing the kind of slow-burn crossover ballad which allowed Coldplay to make a name for themselves before they gave up trying.

Fronting a tight four piece band, Cornish deftly skips between piano, guitar and harmonica, and even manages to pull off the incredible task of nailing a violin solo mid song without the audience bursting into laughter. From the opening solo version “I’m on the Right Side” (as featured in the film Solstice) to the crescendo of “Until the Traffic Stops”, Cornish and his band do indeed manage to stay on the right side of pastiche and avoid slipping into territory reserved only for James Blunt and ironic cover versions. The only real flaw (bad jokes and tedious anecdotes are allowable) in tonight’s performance is the absence of current single “Untied” from the set – a promotional opportunity foolishly shunned. Overall, tonight shows that Alex Cornish is a sufficiently accomplished musician and songwriter that he should avoid falling into the singer-songwriter’s trap of overindulgence and producing tepid coffee-table music. Let’s hope things stay that way.

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