Margo Cilker – Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh – August 29, 2025.

MARGO CILKER

A wild swimming session she enjoyed en route to this gig somehow seems appropriate as Margo Cilker has been making waves to win over more and more fans with her music in recent times.

In this intimate setting she has us all enthralled with her story telling which is authentic, warming, concise and engrossing.

She wryly describes the songs as her “Northwest Pacific suite” and her flawless singing about the impact of love and loss, wanderlust and cowboys, landscapes and more creates vivid images.

Tehachapi, from the stunning Pohorylle, her 2021 full-length debut, is simply brilliant where longing and uncertainty merge as Margo sings: “Wasn’t much of a warning / He disappeared one morning / Put his mattress up on the back of a pickup truck.” If the unknown ‘he’ ever thinks of her in Tehachapi is something we still don’t know.

Kevin Johnson, from the same album, has got a kick and bump edge while Lowland Trail, opening track on 2023’s superb Valley Of Heart’s Delight, has a gracious, nostalgic swoon – “Got trouble cropping up where there could have been love // I’ve seen it on a lowland trail // You put it all on the line and it wasn’t enough // Better take it to a lowland trail.” The simplicity makes it all the more revelatory.

Steelhead Trout, a cover of her friend Ben Walden’s song, is another jaunty offering prompting even more smiles from the stage and an enthusiastic crowd.

The top-notch set list highlights Margo’s ease in creating unfettered songs with country and indie folk vibes and here her bandmates – husband, Forrest Vantuyl on acoustic guitar and Tom Bailey playing upright bass – deserve credit for filling out the songs without ever over-powering them.

As she spends so much time on the road, Fred Eaglesmith’s Trucker Speed provides an apt song to tackle and it’s a knockout version: “When the coast is clear I drive with my knees // I mix it all up like a recipe Coca-Cola and coffee to wash it down // Sometimes I feel like my wheels ain’t touchin’ the ground.” A powerful, eye-opening song delivered here with a sympathetic troubadour’s lightness of touch.

A two-day stop in Shetland and then to Europe is next on the agenda before a two-week break back home. Then, the ever-smiling Margo hits the road again.

We are so pleased she stopped off here tonight as it really has been something special.

Mike Ritchie

https://www.margocilkermusic.com/