Grace Petrie

17th May 2019

Summerhall, Edinburgh

It is difficult really to write too much about Leicester based singer/songwriter Grace Petrie without recourse to her strongly-held political views.  For her lyrics and, indeed, her lengthy song introductions, pointedly ensures we are all left in no doubt where she stands on many issues close to her heart.

“Are you all left-wing?” Grace enquired of us at one point.  “Well, I like to believe so,” I thought, “but actually, it is none of your fucking business”.

“Are we all feminists?”, was another nosey-parker/team-building enquiry.  “I would actually term myself a Humanist if pushed, if it is all the same to you”, I wish I had had the temerity to reply.

We were presented with numerous pointed references to the singer's sexuality, none of which I found remotely interesting.  My stance on such things has always been that some people like to go abroad on holiday, some people like to stay in the UK, whilst others enjoy both.  Personally, it is no big deal.  Although I do appreciate it is an issue some god-botherers can get very irate - often aggressively so - about.   

That being said, I recall we had a gay chap at work a few years back, whose partner would never come to work nights out because “he didn't like straights”.  Now that was fine, but it did at the time, make me wonder if there is such a thing as “heterophobia”.   And if so, it is any more acceptable than homophobia?  I have no answers.

Grace's references to the “LGBT Community” throughout, I did find a touch uncomfortable; the term giving me the same uneasy feelings I encounter whenever I hear the likes of “The Loyalist Community” or “The Muslim Community” mentioned on the news.  Adding the term community to an adjective just seems to me to be designed to create an inside - and by inference, an outside - hemming people both in and out.  I always understood the best way to bring people together was not by building walls, but by building bridges.

Grace Petrie - Edinburgh Summerhall

Grace's strident Billy Bragg-like tunes God Save the Hungry and Farewell to Benefit, whilst certainly rousing pieces espousing politically germane sentiments, nevertheless drifted, I felt, dangerously close to parody in places.

Where she really shone for me was on her more introspective tunes:  This House, The Golden Record and The Road to BC.  She can certainly pen and sing some heartbreakingly poignant stuff.  Her rendition of Richard Thomson's Beeswing, in particular, held the small room in rapt silence.

Whatever else the delightfully spiky Ms. Petrie is, despite her assertion to the contrary, she is most certainly not a fraud.  

This lady is the Real Deal.

Grace Petrie - Edinburgh Summerhall

Set list

Emily Davison Blues
Nobody Knows I'm a Fraud
A Young Woman's Tale
This House
Ivy
Beeswing
Black Tie
Interval
God Save the Hungry
Pride
The Distance
The Golden Record
The Road to BC
Farewell to Welfare
They Shall Not Pass