ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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The Levellers
LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL ON THE FIDDLE 9.11.09 Download only release @www.vanguard-online.co.uk
The Levellers turn 21 this year and, last year, treated themselves to a twentieth birthday present of a posh gig with string quartet, grand piano and other music professionals. Some way from the cider drinking crusties with dogs on string image they earnt in the early nineties festival scene. It’s nice to know the hippy vibe isn’t lost – they recorded the gig but managed to lose some of the songs thanks to equipment failure (spilt cider? or a dog chewing the cables?). Like many a bunch of old hippies, they split the gig into an acoustic and an electric half. The album serves as an alternative ‘hits’ collection and, since their last ‘best of’ is ten years out of date, it’s a useful career overview, drawing, as it does, from five albums, spanning their first decade, augmented by their most recent studio album. It opens with the lilting No Change, a fiddle-led lament before moving on to an old favourite, Julie, a sad and personal song. Together All The Way swings and Before The End is the martial dance that punk bands used to pass off as reggae. It is also the band’s first love song, after a twenty year career. Death Loves Youth is a very typical Levellers song, again from the most recent album. Strings get suffocating and hypnotic here. There is, as expected, a more energetic live edge to the songs here than on disc, though a little reined in by working with other musicians. Songs like Exodus, well known over the years, have a martial edge and a live energy, others. Other familiar ones, like Hope Street, have a rich string sound added, as does This Garden, alongside its dancey vibe. A nice momento for those that were there or a taster of The Levellers for neophytes. Worth investigating, if only to support oe of the few bands that still manages to live by its founding principles. www.levellers.co.uk |
