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Stereophonics music review
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Stereophonics Live From Dakota
Vox Populi
It’s a tricky thing, a live album. Really, a live show and a recorded album are two completely different art forms; one as distinct from the other as film is from theatre. To capture the energy and ambiance of the former in a format that rewards perfection and nuance . . . Well, many a critic has spilled plenty of ink and pixels trying to unlock the secret of how the rare disc manages to capture the essence of a band’s live performance. It has certainly been done (Live Rust, Mad Dog and Englishmen), but even the greatest of live albums is more likely to function as a vital historical document (Bob Dylan Live 1966, The Anthology of American Folk Music) than as an exceptional work of art in its own right. And those are the best of a sorry lot; most live albums fail to achieve anything more ambitious than providing a double-disc souvenir for those precious few who happened to be there that night.
Track listing: Disc: 1
01 Superman
02 Doorman
03 A Thousand Trees
04 Devil
05 Mr Writer
06 Pedalpusher
07 Deadhead
08 Maybe Tomorrow
09 The Bartender And The Thief
10 Local Boy In The Photograph
Disc: 2
01 Hurry Up And Wait
02 Madame Helga
03 Vegas Two Times
04 Carrot Cake And Wine
05 I'm Alright (You Gotta Go There To Come Back)
06 Jayne
07 Too Many Sandwiches
08 Traffic
09 Just Looking
10 Dakota
So why even try? Stereophonics certainly haven’t. In the liner notes to their new long play, Live in Dakota, they openly pitch the album as a way “for our fans to celebrate and share how great 2005 was on the road around the world.”
It’s a smart move, as for those who not there catch all the excitement in person, the album has little to offer. Performances of chart-toppers like “Just Looking” and “The Bartender and the Thief” are inferior to the album versions, sound quality throughout is a muddy mess of electric guitars, and there are no stunning new arrangements of old favourites. Even the between song banter falls flat, being primarily devoted to recounting the track list (“This next song is called . . .”) and doing little to enhance the listener’s understanding of the songs. Add to that the dubious timing of the album – while they were still enjoying some chart success at home in the UK during the tour, Stereophonics experienced the true peak of their career a full six years earlier as they rode the last eddies of the Britpop wave – and you have a recording that fails the test both as a work of art and as a historical document.
But should you be a major Stereophonics fan who was blown away by their most recent tour and want to relive it as often as possible, you might have just found yourself one fine souvenir.
