REVIEW: SBT (Sarabeth Tucek)—Live In Bergen (2025)

Beautiful Record Store Day vinyl exclusive release showcasing this criminally underrated artist.

In my ongoing mission to shine a light on some of the finest overlooked talents in the world, I’ve realised that a whole load of them are female artists. It’s not that I’m on some kind of deliberate quest: it just so happens that some of the best music I’ve heard over recent years also happens to not be by men.

The thing I find myself wondering repeatedly is why these quite obviously top class songwriters don’t have a bigger audience. It’s never about the songs. The songcraft of the likes of Ora Cogan, Deradoorian, Frøkedal, Juanita Stein, Elle Kempner (aka Palehound), Samantha Crain, Tess Parks or girl groups like Gloria, Momma, Horsegirl, La Luz/Shana Cleveland and others is truly stunning. And yet if you dare to dig into their respective audience figures, it’s a depressing inditement on the health of the industry.

When people bemoan modern music standards, essentially implying that it was better in my day, what they’re really admitting is they haven’t tried very hard to seek any of it out. There’s an avalanche of great music around. It’s just that—for whatever reason—the mainstream industry isn’t spending the kind of money required to break any of these artists. You just won’t hear 99% of it, anywhere.

Even our great publicly funded BBC passes over these artists bar the odd solitary play here and there (aside from Riley & Coe, who have been gradually sidelined into a graveyard shift halving the airtime in the process, and occasionally Radcliffe & Maconie or Guy Garvey and Iggy Pop will play the odd rarely played gem at the weekend). What the criteria is for making the playlists is, is anyone’s guess.

Through this situation, I’d managed to avoid hearing anything by Sarabeth Tucek until Marc Riley played The Gift about two years ago. It stopped me in my tracks, and I was off on a mission to find out more. If you’ve never heard it, check it out. It’s a masterpiece.

Fortunately for me, the release of The Gift signalled the end of a long hiatus for Sarabeth, with a fantastic double album, Joan Of All, following, a full band tour, and, now, this brilliant, exclusive vinyl-only live collection for Record Store Day 2025. which she decided to also tour a few weeks ago.

So having not not come across her at all, I’ve managed to see her twice at The Hug & Pint in the space of 15 months. Lucky me. As she pointed out on the night recently, the Live At Bergen LP was actually recorded without their knowledge, back in August 2019, but came out so well it made sense not only to release it as an album, but physically tour approximately the same set.

That’s a smart thing to do, because it effectively serves as a kind of career-spanning set, featuring some of the best songs from all three of her albums, from the self-titled 2007 debut, and the 2011 follow-up Get Well Soon. Again, if you’re not familiar with any of these, check them out. Delights await.

The set on this record interprets the band ‘sound’ as a kind of unplugged affair, two voices, two acoustic guitars, a bass and an organ. The other week, it was just the two guitars and two voices, but did sound more or less the same as this record, which is to say lush, intimate, and a fantastic interpretation of a run of great songs. My favourites being The Living Room (from the most recent album), Wooden, and The Fireman, both off Get Well Soon. Honestly, they’re all good. There’s not a duff track on here.

Unfortunately I can’t link to the stream, as there isn’t one! Instead, here’s a live set from 2023 and the most recent studio album.