I was aware of Lindisfarne for years without every properly checking them out. There was the single Run for Home in 1978 which the primary school aged me quite liked at the time, even if it now feels a bit more glossy and polished compared to their earlier stuff, and of course I knew Fog On The Tyne. Even before they accompanied Paul Gascoigne on a version of the latter to exploit his post Italia 90 profile, there always seemed to be a whiff of novelty to that song for me, which didn’t encourage me to dig deeper into the band. Big mistake.

When I was trying to flesh out Dave’s musical tastes for Dead Man Singing, I listened to a lot of music that had passed me by but which I thought he might like. Lindisfarne’s first album, Nicely Out of Tune was a revelation. Alan Hull is a wonderful, lyrical songwriter ranging from medieval-tinged love songs like Lady Eleanor to biting social commentary such as the sparsely beautiful Winter Song. The songwriting contributions of band-mate Rod Clements, particularly Road to Kingdom Come, are just as good. On both writers' material intricate, sharp folk-style harmonies interweave with jangly arrangements with plenty of acoustic guitars, mandolins, and other shibboleths of the UK folk rock scene. And who can resist an album that includes a credit for one member – Ray Jackson – playing the flatulette (which Wikipedia helpfully informs me is a blown raspberry)?

Although Nicely Out of Tune didn’t sell in significant numbers until after the success of the also excellent follow-up Fog On the Tyne, I came to the conclusion that Dave Masters would have preferred the first album, although listening again now while writing this blog post, I can see that some of the songs on the second album – particularly January Song – would have spoken well to Dave’s situation. Part way through the process of building Dave’s selected albums, I realised that I had a tendency to go for earlier material with a lot of the featured artists. It wasn’t a conscious thing, at least not at first, but on reflection I think that suits Dave’s sense of himself as having lost his original focus and allowed his own art – and, indeed, his life – to wander away from first principles. The music he clung to possibly reflected his desire to rediscover something he had lost along the way, and Dead Man Singing follows his attempts to make that reconnection.

Like their fellow UK folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne have acknowledged their debt to The Band, whose 1968 debut Music From Big Pink changed the world. Where their transatlantic counterparts drew deeply on the wellspring of American music, Lindisfarne dug into their own roots, creating something unmistakably English. More than that, their music is hewn from the North-East landscape and culture they grew up in. It’s the sound of artists tapping in to something deep within, something that only they could have made but which connects to a much wider audience.