Concert Review : Ray Davies - Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

Ray Davies turned up at the Concert Hall in Glasgow to provide a masterclass in songwriting, with a set whilst leaning heavily on the old classics still contained a healthy input from his last studio album, Working Man's Cafe.

Starting off acoustically and working through a number of classics before being joined by a full band, including Ian Gibbons who had been the last keyboard player with The Kinks, Davies was in good voice and prefaced many of the songs with amusing anecdotes. During the show he was perhaps a little too keen to test out the singing voices of the audience - I'm all for singing along to well loved choruses but his constant requests to sing louder with reprises of choruses did begin to wear a little.

The high points of the evening were an acoustic reading of Waterloo Sunset, and the full band (but still restrained) performance of Celluloid Heroes. From a lengthy catalogue of timeless classics, I do think these two might just be his best.

Support for the evening was provided by Roddy Hart. I previously saw Roddy supporting Jeff Beck earlier in the year but hadn't really been able to appreciate him fully as I'd slumbered through much of his set. This time round he demonstrated that the fault was my tiredness, rather than any lack of quality on his part. Another fine songwriter, with a strong voice and a confident stage manner, his set was filled with strong melodies that encourage investigation into his two albums. One to catch with his band at some point.