Edinburgh's original open mic night

Fionna Ross (Elliot's Ambition)

at OOTB

(April 2004)
Fionna opened with a song she'd written just four days earlier - one of the benefits of OOTB's set up is that it is conducive to people trying out new material almost as soon as it's written. With an opening chord sequence straight out of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", this was a short love song where Fionna was "praying maybe you might stay - dream a dream for another day" Her second song was the best so far of the night for me. It featured deftly picked guitar and a strange and entirely coincidental juxtaposition between the melancholy of the song and the occasional bursts of hilarity drifting up from the pub downstairs. Fionna's last featured Spanish style strumming and, like so many songs tonight, apparently just two chords. It had a kind of Lilith Fair Angsty Rock feel to it. An entertaining set and I look forward to seeing Fionna again.

(Oct 2004)
Fionna Ross is onto something special. "Unrequited" with it's understated but mesmerising hook and slow and almost menacing build up of tension is a great little song. "Falling" is another slow and broody piece that I find compelling and again hypnotic but still curiously jagged in places, as you have to work hard to pick out the lyric and fathom the depth of Fionna's slightly disturbing material. Her voice plays a game with your ears and then tails of into a low moan to the drumbeat picking of her guitar. Never changing mood she finishes with "I am a fallen shadow - someone I used to be" even more melancholy than the first two she continues to spin a web of gaps and spaces above our heads, holding the audience still and steady as stone. Even pins drop unheard across the room.