LIVE HEARTS

I can't be sure whether the initial incarnation of MOVING HEARTS with CHRISTY MOORE ever played live, but if they did, it does not seem to have been captured on you-tube, let alone on disk. By the time "Live Hearts" was performed in 1982, Mick Hanly had replaced Christy on vocals. It appears that the group was still adapting new material to their repertoire because this album features several tracks not present on either of their first two releases.

The performance of the new songs seems somewhat lackluster, as if Hanly was still finding himself within the band, and the synthesizers appearing on "Dark End" are all the more pronounced here. But, since renditions of "Let Somebody Know" and "What will you do about me" are both excellent, I wonder whether it is simply the newer songs like "1-2 Freddy" and "Open Those Gates" that aren't worthy of the group's repertoire. In contrast, "Strain of the Dance" is superb, sounding surprisingly akin to what Christy Moore was to do on his own a bit later, like "Biko Drum". Here Hanly seems much more confident, perhaps because he is working with a much more powerful piece to begin with. The album closer is a fine version of the instrumental "Lake of Shadows"

Hence we have a mixed bag of live performances that are valuable if only because they remain the only available concert recording of the period, but also reflect a band that rose to the level of its material. With two out of the three newer songs being inferior, perhaps the saga was indeed spent in two short years, and least for Moving Hearts as a vocal oriented Celtic rock band. 2.5 stars rounded up for historical significance.