London Folk Magazine and News
Show of Hands - ´Now We Are Four´ Live Album Review
Now We Are Four - Show of Hands with Miranda Sykes and Cormac Byrne
Since the release of their first album in 1992, Show Of Hands have impressed crowds in a myriad of venues ranging from local pubs to the Royal Albert Hall. Just like their first release, their latest album ´Now We Are Four´ is a live concert, capturing the bands first gig in over a year and performing as a four piece, reunited with bassist Miranda Sykes and percussionist Cormac Byrne.
After a difficult time, with their hotly anticipated autumn tour cancelled due to covid and bassist Miranda Sykes´ battle with cancer, their burning desire to play to a live crowd shines through in the raw energy of this album.
Phil Beer´s fiddle playing is on fire. In their cover of Leonard Cohen´s First We Take Manhattan, Beer takes every spontaneous risk possible and lands them all with his tasty improvised blues licks. This gives the album so much flair and passion which otherwise might be tamed into tentative echoes on a studio recorded album.
At times the live sound of the album lacks a little bit of depth in the guitar and violin tone but the quality and expression of the performance more than makes up for this. For example, there is a fragility and depth in the delivery of Country Life which creates a magical quality, hard to capture without an audience to perform to. This is the track which I can´t stop listening to and I prefer this arrangement to the original studio recording. Steve Knightley´s delicate voice, somewhere between spoken word and singing, sorrowfully captures the changing ways of country life; “the red brick cottage where I was born is the empty shell of a holiday home”.
It´s brilliant to hear such a long-standing folk act back in action and the album finishes with strong versions of all the classic Show Of Hands tracks fans would expect. Miranda´s vocal harmonies are serene, particularly in the soaring ascending harmonies of Just Enough to Lose. Overall it´s a great listen, impressively delivered from one of the leading bands in the country and sadly about as close to a ´live´ Show Of Hands gig as we´re going to get for the time being!
CD’s can purchased from the band´s own website showofhands.co.uk
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Review by Robin Timmis
