‘Live in concert’ – Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman place one foot in front of the other and walk the tightrope of live performance, making it look a breeze.

Release Date: Available now (and at gigs – on tour now!)

Label: Iscream Records

Format: CD / download (buy from the K&S website)

A couple of years back we announced how their Almost A Sunset album found the duo “even surpassing themselves.” A class act for longer than we care to remember and 2025 finds Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman striking off a sixth five bar gate as they tally away and chalk up another landmark.

THIRTY YEARS!?

They’re off on a 30th Anniversary Tour too. Amazing that they’ve reached such a milestone with no signs of faltering and a milestone that indeed begs for some sort of retrospective to actually mark their accomplishments. To that end, a career spanning multi disc deluxe box set with unreleased demo and live recordings and Steven Wilson 5.1 atmos mixes might be a tad ambitious. However, more than welcome is their new CD (and download) packed with not only a live in concert recording during the summer of 2024 at Kingston Country Courtyard, Dorset, but some excerpts from bootlegs from Den Haag 2018, Hitchin 2011 and Middlewich 2002.

As you should expect from Sean Lakeman, a master of the production and engineering craft, the live recording sounds superb. With just piano, guitar and vocal to work with, the space to create allows for a crystal clear sound that achieves both a resonance and the sort of intimacy that feels live in your living room. The opening notes offer a clarity and a hugeness to 52 Hertz that sets the tone for a ‘plenty of piano’ (likely decorated with googly eyes) collection.

THE PIANO PERSPECTIVE

A fair portion (eight of the ten tracks) feature piano. A Song To Live By, Pew Tor and Evening Star are unashamedly and beautifully touching while the reflections of A Year Without A Summer see guitar and piano knitting together as one. Balancing the emotional see-saw, the likef of The Lusty Smith – featuring guitar and vocal – Sean in full axeman cometh zone proffers a healthy (and not the only) bout of innuendo done in what Kenny Everett’s Cupid Stunt would call the best possible taste. Songs of wit and mirth indeed.

One might suggest that K&S are arguably at their best when faced with a song prefaced with ‘The’ – hence we get Lusty Smith(s), Drowned Lovers, Buxom Lass(es) and Banishing Book(s). All lively pick me ups to sit alongside a toned down, stripped back take on the fizzing pop of The Fall Of The Lion Queen.

BOOTLEG BONUS

The bonus of a handful of historical recordings adds a little perspective. These ROIO can oft be a tad ropey, yet miles improved from the old days of cassette recorders (and a mic held aloft) sneaked into venues. We’re very much given an ‘in the room’ feel – even detecting a kazoo somewhere captured by the mic. The Drowned Lovers has Kath loud, clear and unaccompanied in the confines of Hitchin Folk Club and The Buxom Lass is equally fine, Sean’s signature rhythm chops, note picking and deliberate strums brilliantly done – well done Hitchin (maybe one ‘from the desk’?)

Whether they’re posing for the album cover in corrugated shelters or emerging from pine(?) wardrobes, Kathry and Sean are never anything less than a delight. Great to have a live souvenir, but also fair warning that these live songs are just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps that archive should be dusted off to see what other treasures loom large.

There’s a glut of K&S video on their Youtube, so here they are at Cropredy in 2013!

Kathryn & Sean online: Website /Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Youtube

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