ARCHIVE
JACKIE LEVEN
THE SPECIALIST
Solo career-spanning set, long needed, by one of Scotland’s finest songwriters
Leven: a questing troubadour and so much more
PAUL_HEARTFIELD , JOE DILWORTH
Straight Outta Caledonia… The Songs Of Jackie Leven
NIGHT SCHOOL/SCHOOL DAZE
9/10
REVELATIONS come from the most unexpected corners. For Michael Kasparis, who runs Glasgow’s Night School imprint, the keys to the kingdom of late Scottish songwriter Jackie Leven were gifted to him by friend and label artist Molly Nilsson. “I instantly knew I was listening to a miracle,” Nilsson writes in the liner notes to Straight Outta Caledonia, of her first encounter with Leven’s music. “The best song ever written.” That song, “The Sexual Loneliness Of Jesus Christ”, long considered one of Leven’s greatest, leads Straight Outta Caledonia. The experience of hearing the song for the first time was so profound for Kasparis that he almost crashed his car.