The lack of mellow keyboard tones and synth drones help perhaps in making this a crisp sounding album, and the songs in general have more vigour to them than those on Everyone You Hold for example. But the (multi-tracked) guitars are acoustic, and Hammill’s stongwriting style has mellowed somewhat with the years, so the overall tone of the album is more quietly intense than ‘Loud’.

Clutch shows the usual emotional range as most of Hammill’s other albums. From songs such as Once You Called Me, which is a gentle and yearning song reminiscent of Ophelia .. all the way to rousing near-anthemic songs like Bareknuckle Trade.

Overall, Clutch is an excellent album, and well worth picking up by any fan of Hammill’s music.

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The twelve songs on this compilation were picked from nine recent albums. Most of the songs have been remastered, and some have been edited slightly from the original release.

The selection of songs makes The Thin Man Sings Ballads a good and a coherent album in itself, and makes for pleasant listening - something which may frustrate fans who’d miss the unrestrained power of his more passionately delivered songs. But then again, the long-time fans (who will already own most of these songs on the individual albums anyway), were not the intended audience for this album.

As with The Love Songs, this is nice enough collection of songs, but there are other albums which are far more essential to the established fan.

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In contrast, the music on Sonix, (a similar album made up of intrumental pieces), was actually a pleasant listening experience - something I can’t say for Unsung. This is an album only for the completionists among us.

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The ebb and flow of the opening track, Here Come The Talkies, is a good sampler of this album - changing between a reflective to an insistent, even aggressive delivery.

Fed To The Wolves is Hammill as awesomely angry as he sounded on classic songs such as Porton Down and Mediaeval, matching them for unbridled fury. Quieter tracks such as Far-Flung; The American Girl and Wendy and the Lost Boy, are all beautifully developed elegiac songs.

What Now? is not a uniformly strong album however, with two songs that meander aimlessly like too much of his quieter 90’s output. Edge of the Road suffers especially because it is book-ended by such dramatic songs as Lunatic in Knots and Fed to the Wolves.

All in all though, this album is recommended, and along with This and Roaring Forties, it is one of his strongest albums of the past 10 or so years.

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Individual songs have some great sound effects and ideas that crop up, such as the multi-tracked choir of voices at the start of How Far I Fell .. but generally the songs have a feeling of aimlessness and lack a sense of cohesion and direction.

This album seems to be a continuation of the ‘Quiet’ series. The textural keyboard washes and musical colouration on None Of The Above is very reminscent of that found on both Fireships and Everyone You Hold.

Overall, not one of his best, but neither one of his worst albums - and certainly not an album to gather more fans of Peter Hammill’s music.

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Hammill wrote the extensive liner notes, explaining the songs and their choice, as well as explaining his performance.

Highlights among the 22 tracks include: My Room (this concert staple appears for the first time on an official live record); and the early VDGG classics, Darkness and Afterwards.

My recommendation? Buy it! This set is a must-have for any fan.

My only complaint about this album is that the 3 hidden tracks at the end of disc 2 are unnecessarily spaced with annoying long silences. Those tracks are real gems and should’ve been accessible without having to resort to the forward button on the CD player.

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This is an accessible album, yet displaying Hammill’s strength in creating a work that shows so much diversity in style. The musical palette varies, as he ranges from songs such as the confrontational Always Is Next to the sustained introspective moodscape that is The Light Continent. Lyrically, Hammill still shows his mastery.

There are numerous things which contribute to making This a standout album. David Jackson’s saxophone playing is simply stunning as ever, and similarly stalwart Stuart Gordon on violin.

Also, where some other albums in the past, (most notably the mid-80’s), suffered from a less-than-exciting production, This is an aural delight, and comes highly recommended.

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Instrumentally, the album is predominantly coloured by keyboard and electric guitar soundwashes, with multi-tracked voices adding to a sometimes ethereal atmosphere.

There is a sense of deja vu with the track Nothing Comes, being melodically and instrumentally reminiscent of Something About Ysabel’s Dance on the Out Of Water album.

Highlights on Everyone You Hold may not be immediately apparent. The opening title track is stunning, but the organ and guitar interlude in Bubble made me long for his more directly passionate songs on earlier albums.

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Now about the rest of the album : the show really is Guy Evans’ show. He invited Peter Hammill along, and from thereon during the run-up preparations to the show, all the other musicians where added to the bill.

The first CD of this set is for the most part Evans and Hammill on stage. The music ranges from avant-garde noise of Fireworks, to the quieter After The Show, here with an added edge due to Guy Evan’s percussion. Hammill’s guitar on Accidents reminded me strongly of Andy Gill’s incendiary guitarwork for Gang Of Four.

On the second CD, the songs are fleshed out with a shifting line-up of musicians coming onto (and leaving) the stage. A menacing Red Shift is superbly performed, and then we have Lemmings with the classic VDGG line-up on stage. For the final two anarchic songs, we have the evening’s complete line-up playing together.

Apart from the ensembles and the Evans-Hammill performances, there are solo pieces, one each performed by Stuart Gordon (violin), David Jackson (saxophone), and Hugh Banton (organ).

Overall, the recording sound is fairly good, but not outstanding, and would be on par for a good bootleg recording. The music for the most part is uncompromising, and it doesn’t make for “easy listening”. This album isn’t one I would recommend to the partial fan, but it certainly has its place.

If you were at this concert, you most likely already own a dozen copies of this album. If you enjoyed the rhytmic explorations on Union Chapel, then try Spur Of The Moment. On the other hand, if you don’t have any live recordings by Hammill, then you should first look towards The Margin and There Goes The Daylight for a similarly gleefully noisy live performance. The two live albums which should perhaps be explored first, are RoomTemperature and Typical.

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The music ranges from the immediately impressive to the perplexing. Typically Hammill, really. Whereas other ’90s albums by Hammill, such as Roaring Forties and This have been quite accessible, X My Heart may need time to grow on you.

Standout tracks: Ram Origami; Material Possession; and the simply lovely lyrics of Earthbound.

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