4 out of 5

Label: WEA

Producer: Ryuichi Sakamoto (album track), Tim Hunt (live tracks, recorded and mixed by)

Part of a (I think) four part series where the opening title track is an album recording, followed by live cuts, this first entry is a good find – a clean recording, some random, unexpected between-song banter, and a nice mix of known to lesser known songs.  It’s short, of course, at four songs, but satisfying – a full disc of mostly acoustic live stuff can get a little sleepy, whether you’re in the crowd or not, so it’s nice to have it sized-down like this.  The album track is classic, and probably the most inventively produced of the Sakamoto tracks from that album, with a chatter of handclaps backing up the slippery guitar rhythm.  Our three live tracks are from Ronnie Scotts Club in ’91, and it’s the beginning of the show, so it takes until the last track on this disc – Killermont Street – for Frame’s voice to warm up so that he doesn’t have to use some live singing tricks to avoid holding a note.  It also has the nice surprise of someone stepping in to tinkle some keys, where the previous two songs (‘Birth of the True,’ ‘Song for a Friend’) are straight guitar.  No idea what Frame chatters about ‘tween tracks, but it was nice to hear him upbeat and making jokes, against the whole singer-songwriter dour persona.  The recording is clean and warm enough that these could pass for album tracks.  A good find for fans.