Clive Gregson & Christine Collister
Album: Home And Away (Deluxe Edition)
Label: Cherry Red
Tracks: 15+16+16
Website: http://www.clivegregson.com

Home And Away is one of those albums that's the stuff of legend. It captures in live performance the very start of Clive and Christine's productive and very special six-year musical partnership, which itself arose out of a series of what might be called happy accidents. The basic story is that in 1984 Clive, while still fronting the band Any Trouble, was so taken with Christine's singing at Poynton Folk Club that he invited her to sing on his solo album Strange Persuasions, shortly after which they were both invited by Richard Thompson to join his touring band. On their return (and according to Clive, almost certainly on Richard's suggestion) they played a few duo gigs that were so well received that "merch product" was demanded - and so a no-frills, cheap and cheerful cassette tape of live recordings from February 1986 was produced, cannily titled Home And Away. It sold out fast, and subsequently came out on vinyl (and on Cooking Vinyl, the label), finally appearing on CD format two years later. Then it languished in deletion as a highly-prized collector's item until its thrice-welcomed reissue in 2005 by Gott Discs. And the music still stood up brilliantly 20 years on…

Now, a further decade later, Clive has been touring with Liz Simcock to promote a remastered anniversary edition of Home And Away, for which Clive has gone back to the original analogue tapes, with astounding results in terms of clarity and presence: in Clive's own words, "the original album has never sounded better". Anyone who hadn't managed to buy the 2005 CD edition, splendid though that was, will have no excuse to hesitate now. It's not just the value of hindsight or historical curiosity at work here, but the music enshrined for posterity on Home And Away really is that good. The material, to paraphrase Clive's words, comprised reworkings of Any Trouble songs, a few off-the-wall covers and a handful of attempts to write something for a specific "someone else" to sing. Rolling Stone magazine may have tagged Clive and Christine "the state of the art in British folk-rock", but that term didn't really go anywhere towards describing where they were at. High-quality, seriously classy contemporary folk-styled songwriting interspersed with a tasty line in rock'n'roll, R&B/Motown and country covers. Not exactly folk, maybe, but repertoire that was (and still is) arguably fast becoming a new kind of folk-scene standard/tradition. A self-confessed "mishmash" it may have been, and performed oh so simply with two voices and an acoustic guitar, but hell, it worked - and it well satisfied legions of fans both then and since. This resplendent new mastering of Home And Away is worth the investment of this latest edition purely for the reappraisal and confirmation of its stature.

But wait! What do we have here? This is a three-disc set, and the two "bonus discs" prove even more essential. They deliver the contents of two complete shows Clive and Christine played in Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in May 1992, during their final tour. In the intervening years, they'd covered a lot of ground, releasing four albums as a duo and developing an even closer musical bond. Christine's considerable vocal talent, which was already remarkable at the time of Home And Away, had matured and blossomed into something absolutely stunning by 1992, and hearing these previously unissued recordings for the first time now I'm having difficulty recovering from having my spine seriously tingled by Christine's expressive powerhouse voice on every song she sings (I could single out How Weak I Am, When My Ship Comes In, We're Not Over Yet or It's All Just Talk - the latter-mentioned, by the way, being the only song to be duplicated between the two shows). The set-lists drew a handful of songs from each of the four studio albums, with a higher quotient from The Last Word, and we can undertake a fascinating "compare and contrast" exercise on the seven songs which are common to both 1986 and 1992 sets. And we can celebrate the sheer brilliance and consistency of Clive's songwriting throughout, equally well versed in catchy almost-pop, everyday vignettes, observational romances and soulful almost-Motown or gospel. Although the "parting of the ways" was in the air, Clive and Christine worked marvellously together during those shows and gave their all with exceptional musicianship and relaxed good humour, keeping their audience with them every step of the way. There's plenty of convivial asides too, and fun is clearly had coaxing the intro out of Tryin' To Get To You. Furthermore, by that time Clive and Christine had built a greater confidence in what they could do on stage, and Clive was found switching from acoustic guitar to electric guitar and piano as the songs demanded, with Christine sometimes helping out on percussion. One of the most surprising - and cathartic - moments comes when during the second show they follow the tenderness of We're Not Over Yet with the blistering electric guitar that backs their cover of Larry Williams' Slow Down. So the pair of bonus discs proves far more than just that - they make this new set a mandatory purchase, even for those who have the Gott CD or any of Home And Away's original incarnations. The packaging is admirably slimline, and the accompanying booklet reproduces Clive's informative notes for the 2005 CD edition while also delivering his own perspective on the 1992 shows. Congratulations Cherry Red, on a truly excellent reissue package.

David Kidman