LIVE AT LAST

There's an alternate timeline where this was, as originally intended, the final Steeleye Span album. Whilst the band have obviously gone on to produce much new material, this is the result of various reunions undertaken with various motives: when they put out this album, it really was their plan that this would be it.

Were that the case, this would be a fine way to go out. With Martin Carthy having returned to the fold on Storm Force Ten, the band spend this live album very much back in the electric folk territory they originated in, as opposed to the more folk-rock style they perfected in their middle period. Most of the material on the album wasn't recorded for a preceding studio album, and there's some real gems here - the crowning jewel of which is the epic Montrose, perhaps the most complex and ambitious epic the band ever attempted, and an original composition of theirs at that rather than a rendition of an old standard.