BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST LIVE

I saw a part of this tour on the Belgian television. Actually it was a summary (about forty minutes) from the concert BJH played in Brussels in 1974. I had vaguely heard about them and I was just stunned by the great mellotron and nice guitar breaks I was discovering. The week after, I purchased "Live 74" and I loved it an awful lot.

Four tracks (out of eleven) from their last album "Everyone..." are featured here. But you can hardly notice the difference with the other older numbers. All of these were "mellotronized" and sounded as if they came from the same work. BJH had the great idea in playing almost their best songs from the Harvest years. Actually, only "Dark Now My Sky" from their debut album is missing. I really would have liked to discover what this song would have looked like after such a treatment, anyway...

I cannot find a single weak moment here: no lenghty instrumental solo (it is not in BJH's habit), just pure musical beauties. To name them here would just be to name them all from "Summer Soldier" the opener to the fabulous closing "Mockinbird". This version is the one I prefer of all their live versions. It is just brilliant. Most songs will sound a bit harder than in their studio version and will be a bit extended. My fave one was "She Said" (and still is together with "Mocking...").

I have listened to this album countless times and I am never bored to do so. It brought me such a nice feeling (and still does as I write). If incidently, you like mellotron, you'll get it at every corner here. Extremely melodic and beautiful.

I can only repeat myself : this album is pure hapiness. Great symphonic music all the way through. I can not find a better album to recommend if you would like to discover this good band. BJH's music is of course not essential but I hope it'll bring you the same feeling that I have : an incredible emotion each time I listened to it. Five stars of course.