Denmark and Scotland join forces

Posted on 17th April 2026

The idea of a double headliner concert is becoming increasingly common, as acts move away from the traditional support performer warming up the audience. I imagine “who goes on first” remains an issue wrestled with in many a dressing room. Ida Wenøe and Samantha Whates solved that problem in a way by appearing on stage together. Although both are singer/songwriters in their own right – Ida from Denmark, Samantha from Scotland – you wouldn’t have guessed it from how both their voices and instruments seem to blend so effortlessly

I’m assuming that whoever took the vocal lead was the author of the song in question, but that’s the only clue we were afforded in a set that included dead birds, daffodils and exquisite corpses. Mourning Time must have been one of Ida’s as she sang it, while the equal, yet opposite, deduction can be made about Samantha’s vocals on Sometimes Something. Yet Samantha’s flute enhanced anything Ida sang, as did Ida’s guitar on Samantha’s music. Most tellingly, it is when they harmonise that the evening goes up a notch. The Unthank sisters immediately sprang to my mind, yet here we have performers living in different countries. It’s both a wonder they ever joined forces, but also a mystery how they could have ever performed separately.

It must surely be deliberate that they chose to avoid explicitly letting on who has done what, instead focusing companionly on the pizza they just consumed and how appreciative they are that people have come out to see them. Having chuckled at the artifice of an encore, they actually closed their show with a performance that deserved the term. Breaking the fourth wall, they stepped down from the stage and, standing amongst us, sang a capella song that was surely the highlight of the evening.

It’s fair to say this was an intimate performance, but what the audience lacked in number they more than made up for in enthusiasm. Aside from a single cover – Labi Siffre’s Bless the Telephone – this was an evening of original material, and that’s not something to be brushed aside lightly. We live in an age when tribute is paid by musicians pretending to be other musicians, and they can fill venues doing so. It seems ever more important that original artists are also given a platform, and so hats off to the Corn Hall for doing so.