LINDISFARNE

Radio Times – Live At The BBC 1971-90 REPERTOIRE

Folk rock stalwarts get phenomenally comprehensive session vault treatment.

Lindisfarne snuck into many early 70s record collections alongside Charisma labelmates and early touring partners Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator. Usually at least semi-acoustic, with cats’ choir nasal folky harmonies that were even wilder in concert, their raucous live incarnations are superbly captured here.

The curse of many such compilations, such as the recent Genesis BBC Broadcasts collection, is the disinclination of compilers to include multiple versions of individual songs. Paradoxically, this is what the diehards – whom these releases are presumably aimed at – want. Happily, this eight-CD box is exhaustively inclusive. So, while there are, for example, crystal-clear takes of the eerie, Edgar Allan Poeinspired Lady Eleanor (introduced on more than one occasion by an enthusiastic John Peel), there’s a version of this and many other songs salvaged from off-air recordings with tape hiss murmuring away on medium wave to bring a satisfied smile to the faces of nostalgists and completists.

Renditions of many of main writer and co-lead vocalist Alan Hull’s best songs are included, not least a storming Clear White Light from Cambridge Folk Festival in 1982, making the original recording sound almost apologetic. There are several takes on the desolate Winter Song: disc five’s 1978 version recorded at Essex University just edges it, with Hull spitting out his words, the disgust and concern now joined by an edge of weariness. Late-period gem Karen Marie tells the story of a New York woman Hull and co-writer Marty Craggs met on a train who was fighting to protect her young daughter from the girl’s vengeful father; it’s a plea for justice in the folk rock tradition, worthy of primetime Fairport. It’s a shame the session version of the epic Dingly Dell, Lindisfarne’s proggiest and most ambitious track, is missing from the BBC archives, but there’s still plenty here to keep the most Lindisfervent listener occupied for months.