King Creosote’s royal progress marches on

King Creosote

Kenny Anderson, the man who is King Creosote, is using his weekends profitably, playing in the parts of the country other artists rarely visit – hello, Great Ayton! – as part of a tour his mum has dubbed Troon, Dunoon to the Moon.

On this opening night in a gently buzzing Troon Town Hall, he solicited other possible rhyming destinations, with heckles for Brigadoon, Scone, even the “lang toun” aka Kirkcaldy/

Eventually he settled on a rendition of From Scotland With Love track Largs (Long) in honour of those who have travelled down the coast to be here.

He was accompanied on his travels by keyboard player Derek O’neill aka Des Lawson (think about it), the eponymous inspiration for I Des, who paired his limpid piano to Anderson’s gentle acoustic guitar and killer fragile falsetto on Your Own Spell but suffered a temporary tech fail on It’s Sin That’s Got Its Hold Upon Us, unwittingly allowing the storytelling power of the track to come to the fore in its purely acoustic set-up.

Much of the spellbinding ninety-minute set comprised tracks from

I Des, ranging from the cheerful cheerleader hop of Susie Mullen to the candid but vulnerable Burial Bleak

King Creosote is hitting the roads less travelled and the poetic and poignant Blue Marbled Elm Trees, with its stately synthesized strings and sincere valediction.

Anderson also covered Comfort In Rum by his former shipmate HMS Ginafore, comprising a beseeching vocal melody over a one-chord strum, and kept the cathartic mantras rolling with the simple prayer of Pauper’s Dough – one of Patti Smith’s favourite jams it has transpired.

Urged later in the set to “get the old ones out”, he responded by excavating Home in a Sentence, “one that fell off the Ark” around 2007.