This was the same Caravan line-up I’d seen in Bury in 2017, performing a slightly pared down set to meet the demands of a packed evening’s schedule, but with a set list reflecting, as in Bury, both the old and the new. Missing was that gig’s highlight ‘Love In Your Eye’ but added was ‘Nightmare’, a piece I’ve never given much time to it in its original form, but here beautifully conceived and executed with some stunning viola work. If only it had been followed by the ‘Last Unicorn’… The classics ‘Golf Girl’ and ‘I Wish I Were Stoned’ were both aired, the former made memorable by percussion from spoons and washboard, and the extended opus tonight was ‘Nine Feet Underground’, more of which later. A healthy smattering of more recent material appeared in the middle of the set, sounding a little stronger on second hearing for me, with again, ‘Dead Man Walking’ by some distance the classiest tune in this regard.
One of the advantages of our crow’s nest seats was that we had a full panorama of the band, and were able to see what a fine drummer Mark Walker is, with clear sensitivity to all the dynamics of the show. Perhaps unfairly he will probably always be seen as having unfathomably large boots to fill in the form of the much-loved Richard Coughlan, something that hopefully recedes over time as it has with the roles of Jim Leverton and Jan Schelhaas, given their longevity in the band. Again, our vantage point revealed quite how effortless the latter’s keyboard work is – yes, he can roll out those Dave Sinclair solos, but as it’s fairly pointless in trying to compete with, in my opinion, the genre’s finest soloist, he’s done something much cleverer, i.e. infused the music with something much more his own. Rather than those melodic, soar-across-the-hills solos of Dave Sinclair, Schelhaas is a boogier, a honky-tonk groover and I loved his work tonight.
One of the bonuses of having such versatility around is that when the ship goes off course, there are plenty of skilled hands on deck to bring things back in line. Such was the case with Pye Hastings’ ongoing struggle with his guitar sound, particularly during ‘Nine Feet Underground’. Quite what caused this remains a mystery, but his own anguish at an irresolvable problem was made light of as the gaps in the sound were filled by keyboards and who knows what array of instrumentation by Geoffrey Richardson – it was expertly enough done for us to perhaps never know whether the inspired picked out solo on the viola was scheduled or not. Any doubts that Caravan were the main draw for much of the crowd, despite their set starting at 7.30(!) was dispelled by the heartfelt standing ovation they received at the end of the set.
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