Music

3hattrio, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Rob Adams, four stars

Greg Istock, Hal Cannon and Eli Wrankle don’t play with a backdrop of the Utah desert behind them. They don’t need to. As the trio, all wearing hats, as advertised, of varying styles, mix the colours of Istock’s tapping double bass figures, Cannon’s understated banjo picking, and Wrankle’s superbly judged violin on their collective palette, the listener can easily imagine the view from Istock’s cabin that inspired the morning jam sessions from which they created their singular sound.

It’s all red rock and grand canyons and as Cannon intones his plainsman’s poetry with his calm, wise and deep delivery, away in the corner of the landscape there’s a herd of cattle being coaxed along the trail through the sand and wind. Yes, 3hattrio’s performance is this atmospheric.

Largely acoustic but with a modicum of electronic assistance to enhance the elemental quality of their strumming, plucking and bowing, their music manages to sound fresh and current while also suggesting a time somewhere between the American Civil War and the arrival of the motor car.

One or two of the songs they sing actually date back to that time, Goodbye Old Paint being attributed to a former slave who worked the cattle trails while their own Along for the Ride is just as sepia-tinted through their carefully created accompaniment as through Istock’s parched, characterful singing.

You might not expect a group who so wilfully and strongly go their own way to adhere to such conventions as audience participation and dramatic finales but Istock almost has this crowd singing in tongues, or at least tongue-twisters, and the end comes with a build-up that’s subtly magisterial and magically transportive.