Reunions in folk music, as in pop and rock, continue apace. Already this year we�ve seen Pentangle revisiting, and in some instances exceeding, past glories 40 years after their first bow.

Star rating **
Reunions in folk music, as in pop and rock, continue apace. Already this year we've seen Pentangle revisiting, and in some instances exceeding, past glories 40 years after their first bow. Bob Fox and Stu Luckley don't have quite the same pedigree as Pentangle, although they did cause some excitement in the late 1970s and there'll be many good-on-yers on the folk scene for their re-recording of their albums from those days in the face of a certain entrepreneur's intransigence with regard to re-issues.

They were loudly received here but while you have to admire the industry and application that's gone into researching and arranging their material, much of it from their native north-east of England, and while acknowledging the fact that they can play a bit, it's difficult to share their followers' enthusiasm.

Matters weren't helped by a sound quality that put the emphasis resolutely on Luckley's acoustic bass guitar at the expense of any subtlety such as Fox's dulcimer playing and if the audience joined in lustily with the many choruses, it was tempting to think that this "join 'em to avoid being beaten by them" policy was, perhaps, the best way to deal with the relentlessness of a duo that performs at, rather than to, its listeners.

Attempts at sensitivity, such as Anna McGarrigle's Heart Like a Wheel, were, frankly, grim and, while Fox's Davey Grahamesque setting of Bruton Town and his informed and witty introductions offered light relief, the night belonged to a kind of folk-prog rock that, with its clunky 1970s riffs and clumsy pop references, hasn't aged too well.