Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
If you are one of the fortunate ones to have witnessed Thunder strike home on stage and whip the crowd into a majestic rock frenzy, one of thought as well as deed, then you just immediately understand that they are rightly lauded as one of Britain’s finest rock acts of the last forty years, and one to whom the public cannot allow to pass by into the shadows without being acknowledged as the ones to host a party, the party of a lifetime.
As part of a double header release, alongside Live At Leeds, the rarity of a live performance by the group being made available to the wider public is one to savour, and as Live At Islington punches out at the Christmas air at the Planet Rock party, the sense of the honest and homely envelops the soundwaves, but always with that great groove, the dirty twist, and the seismic glint in each person’s eye as they brought the house, perhaps unexpectedly for some, on a winter’s night back in 2006.
The two albums though could not be more different, set either side of a period of time when the fanbase thought they were no longer going to hear the sound of a backstreet symphony or receive any dirty love again, and whilst Live At Leeds was marked a glorious return, the Planet Rock spectacular hosted by Mark Jeeves and Rob Birnie in Islington was a performance marked by an uncertainty, the days of their thunderous and passionate set at Victoria Park as part of High Voltage Festival were yet to be realised…but even in a period of hesitation, thunder can still be heard crashing the heavens, making a statement of a storm to come; and that is exactly what they achieved in the north London district.
Comparatively a shorter set that the album set in Leeds, it nonetheless kicks with impunity and direct ferocity, it is a groove of decision and clarity, and most importantly, fun.
With tracks such as Loser, The Devil Made Me Do It, Low Life In High Places, Robert Johnson’s Tombstone, You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down, Backstreet Symphony, and I Love You More Than Rock And Roll giving the evening its deserved and distinctive feel, so the two albums can be seen as a book ends, a lucid certainty that Thunder is forever; it may not have lighting attached, but it will always contain a storm of pride and unrelenting beat, and in Live At Islington that beat, that sound is fantastic and merrily, brutally cool.
Ian D. Hall