The Seekers 50th Anniversary Tour 

Royal Albert Hall, London SW7

4/5

LEGENDARY Australian folk-pop group The Seekers completed the last leg of their farewell tour with two sold-out nights at the Albert Hall to a rapturous response.

   And their performance was a reminder of why in the mid-60s they often challenged The Beatles and The Rolling Stones for supremacy at the top of the British charts. 

   Starting off their career as a traditional folk group, The Seekers have often been — perhaps unfairly — categorised as “easy listening.”         

Unlike their US counterparts Peter, Paul and Mary they were not identified with the protest movements of the 1960s yet their music did encapsulate a yearning for peace and community.

Lead singer Judith Durham (pictured) was in incredible voice on early hits like I’ll Never Find Another You and A World Of Our Own during a memorable first set which paid  homage to their traditional folk origins. 

Stand-outs were a haunting rendition of The Water Is Wide and perhaps their most famous song the children’s lullaby Morningtown Ride, written by veteran US songwriter Malvina Reynolds, one-time columnist for communist newspaper People’s World.

There were  some relatively new songs too, including their own composition I Am Australian with its Woody Guthrie undertones. 

A tribute to Pete Seeger’s old group The Weavers followed after the interval, with the Judith Durham-led When The Stars Begin To Fall and a cover of Tom Paxton’s The Last Thing On My Mind. 

The hits just kept coming, culminating with Georgy Girl and then the encore of The Carnival  Is Over, something many in the audience clearly wished was not the case. 

It’d be a shame if this is The Seekers’ swansong — their energy and commitment on this showing remains as strong as ever. 

Steve Johnson