This release takes us back to the recent past and the opening up of live music after the Covid Pandemic. The Light At The End Of The Tunnel tour was a return to playing live for the band, their last show had been on the With Friends From The Orchestra tour in Essen, Germany in December 2019.
Luckily for the band, 2020 was scheduled for writing and recording, and by the end of 2021 they had just completed An Hour Before It’s Dark. They wanted to get back on the road and planned a 10 date UK tour.
At the time insurance companies wanted extremely high premiums to cover the tour in case of Covid, or in the case of the band, refused it completely. For the tour to go ahead, the “Lightsavers” fund was created with fans covering the tour in case anything happened. Things nearly came to a screeching halt before the tour started when Mark came down with Covid.
This recording comes from the seventh show in Liverpool. The band tinkered with the setlist on the tour, rotating songs as many fans were going to multiple shows. Liverpool crowds are always boisterous which you can hear as the show progresses. h is also in a very talkative mood with a few stories, and the band are obviously happy to get back to playing live again. There are a couple of issues, but these always bring some fun to a show, including a rare occurrence of h missing the intro to Splintering Heart.
There are great versions of Sounds That Can’t Be Made, Neverland, The Leavers, a decent chunk of Brave and a rare outings of The Release and This Train Is My Life.
It also gave the band a chance to debut Be Hard On Yourself from the forthcoming album.
So enjoy a show which gave us all a window to life returning to some sense of normality
This recording was made as a reference for ourselves while touring, and as an archive of our live performance - it was never planned to be released. We have taken the original recording and ‘remastered’ it to provide a better sonic experience, however it has not been re-touched or overdubbed in any way. This recording is provided “as is” – warts and all – for your listening pleasure, so please keep this in mind when listening!
includes full artwork in .pdf format.
