Hamish Napier: The Railway

Strathspey Records

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Following his acclaimed Speyside evocation, The River, multiinstrumentalist Hamish Napier was approached by the Grantown East Highland Heritage & Cultural Centre, due to open in the converted Grantown East railway station. The result, played by Napier with associates including Ewan Robertson on guitar, Fraser Stone on drums and bassist James Lindsay, warmly evokes the glory days of the longclosed Speyside Line. Punctuated with sampled chuffs and whistles, the music works up quite a head of steam on its own, as when piper Ross Ainslie jumps on board in Doubleheader and the punchy Diesel ,orin brother Findlay Napier’s song Jocky

the Mole, inspired by interviews with former railwaymen. It is tenderly elegiac in the slow air Helen’s Song, finely played by fiddler Patsy Reid and Hamish on piano, while The World

Came in by Rail is a lament for a lost world, although the album ends with – of course – a defiant Strathspey.