Rating: 4/5
Review:
A good early live album
This is a good live album. It is a recording of Suzanne Vega playing live in 1984, before the release of Solitude Standing, and before she had achieved anything like the sort of recognition she has today.
There is and endearing and refreshing simplicity and almost innocence to this recording. It is Vega and her guitar only, which lends songs like Luka and Marlene On The Wall, now familiar in their high-production versions, an immediacy and sincerity which I like very much. There is a nice atmosphere over the whole album, set by Vega's rather shy-sounding introductions and even an endearing moment in Small Blue Thing where she has to clear her throat (which anyone who has ever played and sung to an audience of any kind will empathise with!) It is, in short, a good selection of songs, well performed.
The sound isn't brilliant. It's quite adequate, but there's a slightly muddy quality to it which some people may find troubling. I don't mind it too much, but it does tend to make this more of an interesting historical record than an album I listen to just for pleasure.
I'm glad to have this and to have heard it, but now that we have both the Close Up series and the excellent Live At the Barbican recording from 2012 I'm not really sure how often I will listen to this album. It's good, and an essential for Vega fans like me, but I certainly wouldn't start here and if you don't already have the superb Close Up series or Live at the Barbican I would buy them first.
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