Steeleye Span

At 16 I was a huge fan of these fine musicians, purveyors of what I guess is still electro folk rock, and 44 years on I find myself in Eastbourne’s delightful Royal Hippodrome seeing them live once again. Of course the line up has changed and there is new blood in the band as well as old. None finer though than the beautiful Maddy Prior whose voice is as golden as ever.

Their set was a mix of tracks from the new album and songs culled from their vast repertoire. A good mix with favourites sat side by side with the new stuff and a few crowd pleasing hits along the way. Musically there is little denying the talent displayed, fine fiddling, great guitar picking and solos and some exemplary bass too, and the drummer, sporting a fine beard, can certainly hit the right beat.

Sadly though I felt that they were all let down by rather muddy sound. So much of the English folk tradition is about storytelling, the troubadour tradition. If however the vocals, and fine vocalists and harmonisers they are, become lost in a heavy mist of noise then much of that is lost. For this I was sad. We, as an audience, may have been 60ish or thereabouts, but we are not all deaf. To hear Maddy sing I would give five stars any day of the week, but not through this fog of amplification.

Royal Hippodrome Theatre, 23 October 2016

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