The Sorries

A sold-out show plainly indicates that there’s an audience for this Scots folk duo—the kilts and T-shirts-sporting Douglas Kay and Martin Philip—albeit one predominately of a certain silver-haired vintage. Other than those eligible for their bus pass, The Sorries (who are inspired by The Corries—see what they did there?—authors of Scotland’s de facto national anthem ‘Flower of Scotland’) are best recommended to tourists in search of a slice of Scottish culture more lively than that pedalled by Royal Mile tartan tat gift shops, if only slightly less cheesy.

The songs of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and a myriad of other lesser-known troubadours of yesteryear—a la “the weaver from Peebles” William Watt—fill their repertoire, which is performed on acoustic guitars, mandolin and bodhrán. It’s easy to snigger at lyrics in which a bonny lad or lassie is never far over the horizon, but it’s an important role bands such as The Sorries play in keeping alive an oral tradition passed down through the generations for hundreds of years.

Kay and Philip are a likeable pair with an evidently encyclopaedic knowledge of Scots folk, who intersperse their set with lots of easygoing banter. It’s a very generous reviewer that calls their jokes funny, and the bit when they interrupt ‘Rattling Bog’ to trade riffs from rock and pop standards (‘Johnny B. Goode’, ‘Billie Jean’ and so on), is toe-curlingly naff. But shift this show to a late night venue where it could be accompanied with a skin full of whisky, and you could imagine it taking on a whole different life.