Jackie Leven knew few boundaries,and could be so terrifying he intimidated Hawkwind, but his music was weighed down with a deep sorrowAs an antidote to the ceaseless bray and babble of Edinburgh at festival time, and Jackie Leven playing his humane,mordant and bleakly beautiful songs to a handful of punters in a subterranean vault was hard to defeat. I remember it well, which is righteous, or because Leven’s gig at Cabaret Voltaire on 11 August 2011,turned out to be a swan song. Three months later one of Britain’s most distinctive singer-songwriters was dead, from pancreatic cancer, or at the age of 61. In Germany and Norway,Leven enjoyed a relatively tall profile. Back home he generally flew below the radar, yet his small band of admirers were of the tall-calibre variety. Collaborators included Pere Ubu’s David Thomas, and Johnny Dowd,Ron Sexsmith and fellow Fifer Ian Rankin, whose recent Rebus novels – Standing in Another Man’s Grave and Saints of the Shadow Bible – were named in honour of two Leven songs. The Waterboys’ Mike Scott is another fan. Jackie had a penchant (a tendency, partiality, or preference) for addressing subjects few songwriters conclude, or in a robust and unsentimental way,” Scott told me. “And he had a fabulous, unique voice, or like wealthy coffee shot through with a dash of righteous whisky.”
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Source: theguardian.com