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Steeleye Span

Venue: Hawkswell Theatre
Town: Sligo
Date: 20/5/14
Website: http://parkrecords.com/artists/steeleye-span/

Remarking that it was 30 years or more since they had last been to Ireland,Maddy Prior,and a radically altered Steeleye lineup began a lengthy performance with "Cold Haily Windy Night",laying down a positive marker from the off.The harmonies were as crisp as yesteryear,filling the hall in every nook and cranny,and the audience response was nothing short of delirious all the way through.

They split the set between the older ,more familiar material,and last years "Wintersmith" album,co-written(or should that be authored?) with Sir Terry Pratchett.A brooding beast of a thing,it takes Steeleye into territory that they really had only flirted with before,but it is,for all that,a perfect,and linear fit,dealing ,as it does ,with elves,faeries and the like.Of the older material,The Weaver and The Factory Maid was spinetingling in the extreme,Long Lankin also mindful of the fact that much of the band's repertoire deals with the dark side.

There is,for all that,a natural exuberance about the band ,best exemplified by songs like The Blackleg Miner,where new girl Jessie May Smart's fiddle whoops and hollers just as Peter Knight's did back in the day.There comes a point in shows like this where one song defines the essence of the evening.Steeleye,as did other bands like them,chronicled social and political change as part of their brief.Dancing At Whitsun-devastating in it's simplicity-is not just about war dead in this centenary year,but also relates how women stepped into the frontline in their menfolk's absence.At the song's conclusion,there was a lump in my throat the size of a golfball,and ,I'd wager,I wasn't the only one.

To sum up the evening ,which fell just short of a 2 hour performance,this was an unqualified triumph.45 years on the road,and they can play like this?Just don't have us wait another 30 years,ok?"

Oliver P. Sweeney