Now We are Four

Now that no one's taking live music for granted, it makes the release of a new live album from Devon folk stalwarts, Show of Hands, particularly poignant and welcome. The duo, Steve Knightley and Phil Beer, have released a couple in their decades together, but not since 2004's As You Were has this reviewer heard such a full take on their sound and live experience.

The recording is from the Norwich show of their 2019 tour to promote their last studio album, Battlefield Dance Floor, featuring long-time collaborator, double bassist Miranda Sykes, and Irish percussionist Cormac Byrne. These two musicians bring us to the ‘four’ of the album title, and Byrne's percussion gives the band's back catalogue a richer, deeper dimension. Nine songs here are taken from the new album, as you'd expect. It was an album that melded traditional folk with American blues-rock and even reggae on the swaggering Cornish comedy, ‘Dreckly’. Now We are Four closes with a run of classics, including a wonderfully pared back ‘Country Life’, like Springsteen's austere late vintage ‘Born in the USA’, and a hell-for-leather run at ‘The Galway Farmer’, complete with a most respectable Irish accent from Knightley. Encore!