Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Long held up as one of the modern powerhouse Blues singers of her generation, Dana Fuchs’ authentic, intense voice, her inflamed charm and enticing presence on stage, and in the studio, has marked her card as perhaps being a rival to long missed Sheffield megastar Joe Cocker, feminine but filled with the sovereignty, the engine of a Rolls Royce, as she punches home every drop of blood from the words and guitar with fortitude and fierce cool.
Almost four years on from the release of the album Borrowed Time, Ms. Fuchs once more steps into the spotlight of vulnerability and releases via Ruf Records a live performance captured at a dramatic evening at Godset in Kolding, Denmark, and it is one of the most compelling, accomplished nights to come the way of the faithful listener and the intrigued newcomer in a long time.
Live In Denmark is Dana Fuchs at perhaps her most exposed, most open, and fiercest to have been unleashed on those unable to hear her directly. The symbol of Blues, her place amongst the modern incredible standard that includes the brilliant Joanne Shaw Taylor always assured, but something within the recording that digs a little deeper, a soul perhaps bruised but never showing the pain before, now finally able to scream in fury and defiance.
To hear a live album takes more than the ability to listen, it takes imagination, the capacity to see the vision that wasn’t in place, and the details, the knowing looks to the crowd that you are invisible to, and it takes the voice and the music to bring it into focus; without this a live album is just for the collection, a memory of what might have been; but as songs such as Double Down On Wrong, Blue Mist Road, Superman, the heartbreaking finality of Home Is Where The Hatred Is, Borrowed Time, and the sheer communication and will at the heart of the outstanding cover of The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy For The Devil, what Dana Fuchs achieves is an exploration of personal compassion mixed with empathetic anger, and it is glorious, filled with purpose and no frills to be found at the edges…just a purity of expression that cannot be beaten,
Live In Denmark is an album of absolute charm and ruthless cool, Dana Fuchs kicks back with influence and command.
Ian D. Hall