IN CONCERT

Many live albums of the pre-CD era, conscious of the limitations of vinyl, trim back between-songs patter and the like for the sake of incorporating more music. Magna Carta's first live album does no such thing - in fact, there's a bit of talking in between all of the songs. This gives it a fairly intimate atmosphere, though there are issues; in particular, Johnstone's electric guitar feels poorly integrated into the band's sound here on songs like Time For the Leaving. With the studio renditions of this material generally being stronger, and the recording apparently having been made with folk acoustics in mind without consideration for how the electric guitar would be captured, this ends up a little disappointing.