Margo Price @ Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, 27 Jan

Nashville singer-songwriter Margo Price opens her show at the Old Fruitmarket with Strays, a rousing and nostalgic rock’n’roll song about being young, scrappy and free. Taken from her 2023 album of the same name, it serves as a pretty good introduction to a show which has some of those elements too. There’s a playful quality to Price’s stagecraft, a sense that she's having fun and throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

This attitude has served her well throughout her career, which has reached new heights on her most recent record. Songs from Strays are jewels in the setlist, particularly Been to the Mountain which simmers with rage and the menacing dirge Burn Whatever’s Left.

But it's the older, more straight-up country songs which get the most love from the crowd, such as Hurtin’ (On the Bottle), a foot-stomping highlight from her confessional debut album Midwest Farmer’s Daughter and the bitter breakup song Four Years of Chances from the same record. Her backing band are a great bunch of musicians who move deftly through Price’s sonic eras – from the bluegrassy early stuff to her more psychedelic-inflected recent work.  

A skilled musician herself, Price often slings off her guitar and hops on the drum kit during instrumental breaks. She is indeed a fierce drummer, but her impact in these sections is lost in the wider instrumentation. It’s not that solo artists shouldn’t attempt this kind of revue-style rocking out with the band, but it works best when the band are pulled forward to share centre stage. Price’s efforts work the other way round, as though she has stepped back to become just another member of the band.

She appears to be caught slightly between two worlds as a performer – between band member and frontwoman. Price has terrific stage presence and real star quality, something she happily indulges in at times, decked out in rhinestones, disappearing for costume changes and spiking songs with bouts of powerful vocal riffing. This stuff really suits the bombast of Price’s music, which is only getting more ambitious as her career progresses. At the end of the show, she throws red roses to the audience before hopping down into the crowd to perform a singalong rendition of Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz. Leaning into her solid instincts for showmanship will only take Margo Price’s shows to higher heights.