COMMUNION

This wasn't Fish's first attempt at putting out an acoustic set - the Acoustic Session release from back when he was first setting up the Dick Brothers Record Company preceded this - but it's his most expansive one, being a two-disc, nearly two hour-long live show of acoustic arrangements of his material.

This isn't a completely absurd move; Fish had dabbled in including a few celtic folk influences into his sound over his solo career, which meant he already had a chunk of material which lent itself to this approach, and generally a good job is done of selecting tracks which fit the general vibe. (The one Marillion-era pick, Slainthe Mhath, is an apt one in that respect.)

The issue, however, is that by concentrating to this extent on this dimension of Fish's repertoire, the set inevitably ends up lop-sided and a little samey, and also much of the material doesn't sound that much different in the acoustic format than in its original. In some cases, Fish and the band adapt the material a little more freely, but their judgement is shaky there: State of Mind was fine as a four-minute song and could have been wrapped up in that time here, it didn't need three minutes of jamming tacked onto the end, especially not when much of that jamming is the sort of high-energy affair which would work better in an electric set to begin with.

It's alright, I suppose, but it's harder and harder at this stage in Fish's career to avoid the fact that his voice is not what it was in his prime, and overall the collection doesn't hold my interest as much as either his original studio albums or his better early-career live albums do.