CUT THE AIR AT MELLO CLUB (ROGER WOOTTON & PIU)

On their first and so far only live album Lisa o Piu managed to score a major coup by landing the brilliant Roger Wootton of Comus, shortly after Wootton had reformed his legendary band in 2008. Wootton and Piu played a pair of dates at Mello's flagship club in Stockholm in December, 2008 from which these six tracks were culled.

I'm not sure what the group's entire setlist was for those shows, but this sampler is a great cross-section of Comus standards and some of Piu's better material, which at the time was a pretty limited catalog given the band had only released one single at that point in their career. They would issue a debut studio album (without Wootton) and a follow-up over the next couple of years, both considerably more mellow than these tracks and much more subdued than anything Comus ever recorded.

The first and most noticeable characteristic of this record is the excellent recording quality, especially given it was cut live and in a small club setting. The group had clearly spent a fair amount of time rehearsing and working out the arrangements, as the Comus material had to be adapted to a slightly different instrument set, although the requisite acoustic guitar, violin and flute are staples of Piu's band as much as they were in the original Comus lineup.

Wootton's influence is rather obvious if one listens to the later Piu studio material. The band's original tunes, especially the throwback 'Cinnamon Sea', are a bit edgier than the versions they would record on their own. At the same time the Comus tracks aren't anywhere near as raw and biting as they were on the early recordings that made Comus a legend in psychedelic folk circles. In all the softening of Wootton's output and concurrent scuffing up of Piu's material makes for a pretty much homogeneous offering.

The highlights are the reverent though somewhat measured rendition of the classic 'Song to Comus', the Piu original 'Cinnamon Sea', and a pleasantly awkward offering of 'Out of the Coma' which most of the original Comus lineup would release as the opening track on their comeback album of the same name in early 2012.

One surprising inclusion is 'Down (Like a Movie Star)' from the 1974 Comus release 'To Keep From Crying'. I've always liked that song, but at the same time have to admit when I first heard of this recording I sought it out hoping to hear a gloriously raunchy version of 'Diana' or even 'Drip Drip' from the classic 'First Utterance'. Sadly I was disappointed on that point.

No matter, this is a delightful collaboration featuring the godfather of Wyrd folk and a young representation of the New Guard, both with similar aspirations though at decidedly different points in their respective musical careers. Wootton would go on to hold his reformed Comus together long enough to produce a new studio album, and Lisa o Piu cranked out a couple records of their own. Both of them seem to be at crossroads today, and it will be interesting to see what comes next from the two musical experiments. In the meantime this is a solid bit of music that should appeal to most any fan of psychedelic folk. This is easily a three star offering and well recommended to most prog music fans.

peace