Album Review: The Inspector Cluzo - The Organic Farmers Season – Unplugged Live 2020
Reviewed by Paul Hutchings
Cast your mind back to those innocent days in February 2020. Gascon duo The Inspector Cluzo toured the UK in support of their excellent ‘Brothers in Ideals’ record. The pair arrived in Bristol and played a fabulous gig at The Exchange, supported by around 100 or so eager and excited fans who gathered in the venue to enjoy the band’s unique and incredibly energetic live show. You can read reviews of both the live show here and the album here.
A mere eight days before that Bristol performance The Inspector Cluzo delivered a majestic unplugged show at Théâtre de Gascogne, Mont de Marsan. A new arrangement, reinforced by violin and cello, saw the band play a fifteen-song set which included their standard cover of Neil Young’s ‘Hey Hey My My (Out of the Blue)’. This album is the recording of that night, and as the drought for live music continues, what better way to appreciate those that strive to entertain us with their art than by immersing yourself into the entire 90 minute set.
The setlist follows a similar pattern, a mix of songs from their catalogue dating back over a decade, but with the additional strings adding layers and depth to each track. Familiar tracks such as ‘The Sandpreacher’, ‘We The People of The Soil’ and ‘The Best’ are all sonically enhanced in such style that by half way through the album you are left wishing you’d been there.
Produced by engineer/mixer/producer Vance Powell (Jack White, Seasick Steve, Raconteurs, Stapleton, Clutch) and mastered by engineer Pete Lyman (Chris Stapleton, Tom Waits), if ever you needed a reason to get involved with The Inspector Cluzo, then this is it. If the magnificent extended jam on ‘The Little Girl and The Whistlin’ Train’ which closes the show doesn’t move you, then the last candle in this bleak and miserable world is surely extinguished.
