Ok, so the review suggests that the concert was a stinker, but having listened to the recording, I have got to disagree.
It's not Ian singing this material, regrettably for so many reasons, but Hooky does a better job with the JD repertoire than I would ever have expected, whether he played the bass much during the gig or not...
The standard of musical performance from the band is really quite impressive for the most part...some performances "approximating to the original" a little too much for my taste - (hear the bass slides in Wilderness, where the top note is just wrong, and the howls in Interzone, which are cheesy, rather than chilling) - but I'm so happy to hear Unknown Pleasures played live again!
The band has a much more filled out sound than JD ever had, a lot of which has to do with the quality of modern audio technology. The guitar playing is stylistically more conventionally "rock 'n' roll" than Barney in his brittle, angular prime. The bent notes and other David Gilmore-isms in "I Remember Nothing" stand out a bit like the proverbial sore thumb, for example.
All in all, though, I was pleasantly surprised and I'm a diehard JD purist from the beginning. I would definitely listen to this more than once, if only for the sake of curiosity and to muse on what might have been...
Ok, so the review suggests that the concert was a stinker, but having listened to the recording, I have got to disagree.
ReplyDeleteIt's not Ian singing this material, regrettably for so many reasons, but Hooky does a better job with the JD repertoire than I would ever have expected, whether he played the bass much during the gig or not...
The standard of musical performance from the band is really quite impressive for the most part...some performances "approximating to the original" a little too much for my taste - (hear the bass slides in Wilderness, where the top note is just wrong, and the howls in Interzone, which are cheesy, rather than chilling) - but I'm so happy to hear Unknown Pleasures played live again!
The band has a much more filled out sound than JD ever had, a lot of which has to do with the quality of modern audio technology. The guitar playing is stylistically more conventionally "rock 'n' roll" than Barney in his brittle, angular prime. The bent notes and other David Gilmore-isms in "I Remember Nothing" stand out a bit like the proverbial sore thumb, for example.
All in all, though, I was pleasantly surprised and I'm a diehard JD purist from the beginning. I would definitely listen to this more than once, if only for the sake of curiosity and to muse on what might have been...
Sound quality is mostly excellent.