For those not in the know, The Saints Are Coming: Live & Acoustic (2007-2021) is a wondrous 6CD set collecting together four live shows from the reunited Skids including one from their acoustic tour plus their 2019 acoustic studio album, Peaceful Times and much more!

Skids were the leading Scottish punk band, playing their first gig at the Belleville Hotel in their home town of Dunfermline in August 1977 when Richard Jobson was just 16.

After U2 and Green Day had a worldwide hit with their cover of ‘The Saints Are Coming’ in 2006 with proceeds going to victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Richard Jobson reformed Skids the following year and played an incendiary radio session for Radio Clyde that is released for the first time as Disc Six of this box set.

Original lead guitarist Stuart Adamson (who had left Skids to form Big Country in 1981) took his own life in 2001, his place on guitar in the reunion was taken by his Big Country compatriot Bruce Watson and Watson’s son Jamie.

Each CD is presented in a newly designed wallet and the booklet features a new interview with singer Richard Jobson, who says in the sleeve notes “We don’t want to do it if it’s not fun for us and not fun for the audience . I think you can hear that in these recordings. Everyone is having fun.”

CD 1: Skids Live: Alhambra, Dunfermline, 6/3/2010
1. Animation
2. Of One Skin
3. Melancholy Soldiers
4. Thanatos
5. The Saints Are Coming
6. Scared To Dance
7. Hurry On Boys
8. Working For The Yankee Dollar
9. Out Of Town
10. A Woman In Winter
11. Charade
12. Charles
13. The Olympian
14. Masquerade
15. Into The Valley

Skids reunited again in 2010 with an incredible set at The Alhambra, Dunfermline, and which opens up this box-set perfectly. With every song played with an energy that defied their age, the Scottish punk rock and (at the time) edging on the new wave cusp band are more the former than the latter in this blistering set, but that’s what aging will do to a grizzled bunch of guys still wanting to perform the classics, live, I guess!

CD 2: Skids Live: The Roundhouse, London, 16/6/2017
1. Animation
2. Of One Skin
3. Melancholy Soldiers
4. Thanatos
5. Dulce Et Decorum Est (Pro Patria Mori)
6. Working For The Yankee Dollar
7. The Saints Are Coming
8. Scared To Dance
9. Charles
10. The Olympian
11. Out Of Town
12. Hurry On Boys
13. A Woman In Winter
14. Circus Games
15. Masquerade
16. Into The Valley
17. Charade
18. TV Stars
19. A World On Fire
20. Of One Skin (Reprise)

Their 2017 show at The Roundhouse on this second disc is another amazing performance from a band firing on all cylinders.

Much like the aforementioned 2010 show, Skids attack this much longer set list with a virtuous rocking venom that puts a lot of today’s so-called youth rockers to shame!

Stand out highlights for me, and I would assume all Skids fans, include Charles (from the original EP) and the early single The Saints Are Coming, along with other tracks from their powerhaus debut Scared To Dance and the forthright Into The Valley.

CD 3: Peaceful Times (Studio Recordings) 2019
1. Into The Valley
2. A World On Fire
3. Kings Of New World Order
4. The Saints Are Coming
5. Animation
6. Hurry On Boys
7. Blood And Soil
8. Fields
9. Kreuzberg ’79
10. Desert Dust

The 2019 acoustic album Peaceful Times on this third disc showed that thundering punk classics worked well as acoustic numbers drawing attention to the quality of the lyrics.

Skids have always been such an electric band and so an album of acoustic cuts sounded a wee bit stretched, but I am thankful to fully admit Jobson and company make each and every one of them work (well, some more than others, of course).

I mean, there is a new life brought into the songs so much so that some of them actually begin to sound almost like new compositions. A song such as Hurry On Boys, previously such a loud anthem, is treated so gently with a wonderful arrangement and Animation is a revelation; along with the newer stuff such as Kings Of The New World Order.

CD 4: Skids Live (Acoustic Tour) - The Sage 2, Gateshead, 10/09/2019
1. Kings Of The New World Order
2. World On Fire
3. Working For The Yankee Dollar
4. Fields
5. Desert Dust
6. The Saints Are Coming
7. Blood And Soil
8. Castles In Spain
9. Charles
10. A Women In Winter
11. Into The Valley

Next up on this fourth disc is a live acoustic tour recording featuring Jobson and the Watsons from which their gig in Gateshead is included.

Much like their aforementioned Peaceful Times acoustic album, Skids took that mellower sound out on the road and it proved to be a massive success with all their lifelong fans.

Chock full of newly-interesting highlights, stand outs obviously include acoustic versions of cult tracks such as World On Fire, fields, Blood And Soil, and both closer’s A Women In Winter and the ever ready Into The Valley.

CD 5: Skids Live: Lockdown Live, Livingston, 9/3/2021
1. Charade
2. Of One Skin
3. Kings Of The New World Order
4. The Saints Are Coming
5. Working For The Yankee Dollar
6. Hurry On Boys
7. A Woman In Winter
8. Circus Games
9. Masquerade
10. Into The Valley

On the fifth disc, Skids’ 2021 Lockdown show performed in Livingston opens with a storming version of ‘Charade’ and finishes with powerful, passionate renditions of ‘Circus Games’, ‘Masquerade’ and ‘Into The Valley’ with no let up in between.

“Oxygen for Mr Jobson, and a defibrillator” he quips at the end, and rightly so as it is truly a blistering, no holds barred, full throttle, foot to the pedal live rock show of the highest order!

CD 6: Skids – Radio Clyde Session, 1/7/2007
1. Melancholy Soldiers
2. The Saints Are Coming
3. Working For The Yankee Dollar
4. Charles
5. Out Of Town
6. Masquerade
7. Into The Valley
8. Vambo
9. TV Stars

The sixth and final CD of this brilliant new box-set is their nine track 2007 Radio Clyde session that includes a cover of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s ‘Vambo’ along with all their usual suspects, of course.

Official 6CD Purchase Link

www.the-skids.com