Kevin Coyne - In Living Black And White (Live) (2010)

Recorded live during 1976, as Kevin Coyne toured to promote his Heartburn album, In Living Black & White is a superlative souvenir of one of Britain's most idiosyncratic singer/songwriters at the peak of his abilities. In the three years that had elapsed since the critical breakthrough of Marjory Razorblade, Coyne's roughshod take on anguished blues-flavored art rock had developed a tautness akin to listening with a cheese wire wrapped around your eardrums, with the fine edge of the concert experience tightening the noose even further. The result, while able to deliver only one half of the full experience (the dyspeptic visuals are necessarily absent), ranks among the most exciting live albums of the age. Four sides of vinyl round up a well-chosen skim through all three of Coyne's albums since the epochal Marjory Razorblade, with that album's brutally churning "Eastbourne Ladies" the first of innumerable highlights encountered as the album wears on -- it emerges out of a superbly slovenly "Old Man River" that, like "Knocking on Heaven's Door" later in the cycle, illustrates just how fine an interpretive singer Coyne was when he put his mind to it (cover versions are at a premium in his repertoire, but when he does tackle one, it is his forever). Further pivotal moments include electrifying renditions of "Talking to No One," "Turpentine," and "Mummy," while the closing salvo of "Big White Bird" and "America," both from Heartburn, is simply breathless, wrapping up the album on a knife edge that leaves you wishing only that there were more to come. In the event, it would be another decade before Coyne's next live album, the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Rough -- Live. And that was a decade too long.~In Living Black & White Review by Dave Thompson