Search - Lindisfarne :: Fog on the Tyne

Lindisfarne at their Best

Morten Vindberg | Denmark | 10/13/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Fog on the Tyne" was Lindisfarne's second album originally released on Charisma records in 1971. It contains their first single-hit "Meet Me on the Corner", and the album itself spent many weeks in the charts. It's popularity even brought their first album "Nicely out of Tune" back into the charts. Interesting that their second hit single "Lady Eleanor" was taken from their great debut-album.



Though "Meet Me on the Corner" was written by Rod Clements, it is still lead singer and guitarist Alan Hull who is the dominating personality with his great songs like "January Song", "Peter Brophy Don't Care", "City Song" and "Passing Ghost".



Compared to their debut, the overall feeling on this album is more acoustic and though many songs are up-beat tempo, there is a very relaxed and pleasant feel to the album.



The two bonus-tracks are great additions; especially Alan Hull's fine B-side "No Time to Lose".



Like their debut "Nicely Out of Tune" , this is one of my all-time favourite albums.



Great sound on this new remastered CD release.



Highly recommended!"

She's a big lass, she's a bonnie lass, she likes her beer...

Junglies | Morrisville, NC United States | 03/11/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Lindisfarne's greatest hit and more popular than the charming, folksy subtleties of Nicely Out of Tune, this album has much to commend it.



As the first album captured the return to the roots to traditional music in the heydey of psychedelica, so this, the second album is atune with the times as young people resumed their long term relationship with alcohol. This album for Lindisfarne is their equivalent of the second Grateful Dead live album, derided by New Musical Express as the boogie Dead. Well this is the drinker's album and I say that not in a derogatory way.



Meet Me On The Corner sounds like an anthem to a dug dealer and begins the album while the famous Fog On The Tyne which closes on the original celebrates the boozy rowdy city of Newcastle on Tyne with that wonderful refrain, we can have a wee-wee, we can have a wet on the wall. In between though the songs take on a more robust outlook while retaining the essential folk-rock sound. No Incredible String Band here but certainly the sounds of the urban poets in an environment forged in shipyards and coalmines and transient factories while industrial decline was to put thousands out of work.



The connection with drinking is very strong in the North East of England. Indeed the Saltgrass folk club in Sunderland was housed in a pub next to a shipyard which overwhelmed the sky and where shipyard workers, coming out of their shift would slake their thirst with a pint or six before going home to eat before returning to a local pub later in the evening. In the early days of deindustrialisation in the godforsaken council estates of Tyneside with their soulless uniformity and treeles vistas, then the only alternative to a life sentence on the dole was drugs and alcohol, the Lindisfarne album was most appropriate for the times. Indeed when touring in promotion of the album, drink was taken aplenty by performers and audience alike while the dancing was robust too.



All of the songs on this album have much to commend them. Alan Hull in particular hits his stride here with tight lyrics with a political message and songs, which outsiders might not find tender but girls from Benwell might.



This album is as much folk-rock as any Fairport Convention album but while the latter reflects a more genteel, middle England view, Fog on the Tyne is Northern through and through. Fog on the Tyne too is certainly more populist and gained the band a strong local following evidenced by the packed house at the first farewll concert at Newcastle City Hall where we all felt like part of the Lindisfarne extended family and the fact that this could be repeated by full houses for many years afterwards despite break ups and reformations and the decline in national popularity.



This album has an endearing quality to it which still exists to this day. So open up a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ales put on your dancing shoes and enjoy."

It grows on you...!

Joe Sixpack -- Slipcue.com | ...in Middle America | 11/15/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This English folk-rock act, featuring singer-songwriter Alan Hull, was one of the big pop successes in the post-Beatles, progadelic era of the early 1970s. This was their second album, and their biggest commerical hits, improbably cracking into the British Top Ten based on the strength of the bouncy single that lent the album its title. Not really that "trad," for the most part this album is a dreamy, drifty acoustic psych-folk exploration, much along the lines of the Incredible String Band, or the early albums by the Dransfield Brothers. Often the lyrics are embarassingly hippie-dippy, yet the album will grow on you, particularly the hit, "Fog On The Tyne," which is the kind of tune that sticks in your mind for hours if you hear it play just before you walk out the door to run errands. A goofy, but unassuming and sweetly naive acoustic prog album... worth checking out!"