PLAYS LIVE

I guess you just had to be there... On paper, this has every element needed to make a great live album, ignoring the deceptive album cover (don't expect any moonlit knights here) and the fact that the sound quality isn't the greatest since that usually isn't a dealbreaker for me: the track listing is mostly good, Gabriel is having a splendid night and his accompanying musicians are doing a good job backing him up. It probably was a great spectacle to see, but on record, divorced from the visuals and the concert atmosphere, it sounds like the musicians are trying their hardest to make this music come to life and failing. I realize that the bar is set high, but these versions of songs like "Family Snapshot" and "I Don't Remember" don't come remotely close to recapturing the energy, timbral richness and emotional prowess of their studio counterparts. Not that I really blame the musicians: I can think of some minor things that could be improved (why is "No Self-Control" slowed down to such a crawling pace, and was it really necessary to quiet down the coda of "Shock The Monkey" just for some obligatory audience participation? Or rather, was it necessary to include such a version here?) but the fact of the matter is that this music was designed to be built up out of many layers in a recording studio and not be recreated live with little freedom for reinterpretation by a five-man line-up. The result sounds disappointingly flat when compared to what it was supposed to sound like. "Intruder" is the only song on the album that seems to have the opposite problem, with Peter's overblown vocal performance of what was supposed to be quiet, haunting song feeling very out of place. To play this song live at all is doing it a disservice.

I suppose it probably goes without saying, but I want to state explicitly that this low rating should NOT be seen as reflective of the musical quality of the songs included here, but rather of the material value of this release. It's perfectly listenable, but I see no reason at all to seek it out instead of just listening to the studio recordings again.