In the same way, play ‘Strike The Viol’ (from Christine Pluhar and Arpeggiata’s Purcell improvisations, Music For A While, Erato 0190295250843) and where many speakers naturally fasten on the gymnastic brilliance and agility of Soprano Raquel Andueza’s vocal, the Peaks set her singing in the context of the band as a whole, balancing it against the chorus contributions of the wind instruments and especially the clarinet: Again, less obvious, but a more complete performance.
From here – the top to bottom linearity and balanced energy, the integrated musical coherence and lack of exaggeration, the overall sense of scale and proportion – it’s not too big a leap to understand the Peak’s ability to respond to and lift live albums, to bring the best out of less than stellar records and recordings. Joe Jackson’s Live 1980/86 (A&M AMA6706) is a brilliant example. The double album maps the musical development of the artist and evolution of the band across that six-year period, culling live tracks from four tours and six venues, including three different versions of the seminal ‘Is She really Going Out With Him’! Cramming nearly two-dozen songs onto four sides of thin and flexy vinyl ain’t a recipe for stellar sound quality, but if you love Joe then this is essential listening, not least because he’s such a brilliant live performer. Once again, the Peaks capture that energy and intensity, the tightness of the band and the growth from its raw, post-punk emergence to the increasing sophistication and variation of the later performances and arrangements. By side four you’ve got a set that includes songs as different as the stark ‘It’s Different For Girls’, the Cab Calloway swing of ‘Jumpin’ Jive’ and the mid ‘80s smooth of an extended ‘Steppin Out’. You’ve even got the ‘love it and hate it’ relationship with the ‘big hit’ in microcosm, as it develops from its original form through an a cappella version to a pared-back, largely acoustic arrangement with accordion and violin!
Recording quality is variable (to say the least); pressing quality is perhaps best described as unfortunate, with a loss of low bass and a splashy treble that can tend to sharpness. Nevertheless, the focussed substance and energy generated by the Peaks, their refusal to expose or spotlight flaws or liberties in the reproduction, but to pull them in and balance them as part of a greater and more complete whole, brings the band, the performances and the album to vivid, vital, pulsing life. I started out dipping back into the discs, looking for specific examples. But in that old cliché, they just pulled me in and I ended up listening to the whole thing over again. When Joe sings about being “brutalised by bass and terrorised by treble” I know exactly what he means: I’ve experienced it all too often from this very album. But this time around, the El Diablos turned that on its head. Rather than constantly trimming the volume back to eliminate the worst of the glare, I found myself turning it up. As the needle runs out on side four it’s almost like the band and the system are saying, “Follow that!”
