SFBM Press Reviews Options

[livefan86]

Allmusic.com has just posted a review of SFBM. The review was one of the best Live has ever recieved and the album got 4 out of 5 stars. Here is the review:

Fifteen years after their debut and ten years after the peak of their popularity, Live finally settle down into a comfortable groove with Songs from Black Mountain, their seventh album and first for Epic/Red Ink. The quartet embrace the change in labels as a fresh start, moving away from the faintly desperate attempts at hard rock and grand statements that plagued their work since Throwing Copper and easing into quieter sounds and modest ambitions. Not that Live's leader Ed Kowalczyk has abandoned his signature spiritual pursuits, nor has the band departed from their U2-fueled anthems, but neither are they nearly as heavy-handed in their attack as they have been in the past. There is a gentleness and genuine sweetness here, a warm mellowing of their signature sound that's appropriate for a veteran band now in their thirties. It also happens to suit Kowalczyk's 12 new songs well. Unlike the tortured tunes that comprised the unsettled 2003 album Birds of Pray, the songs here are warm declarations of love, faith, and family; sometimes they're filled with angst, sometimes they're sweet (and sometimes they still bear his typically overly earnest lyrics), but they're tied together by a soft, understated touch in both his writing and his singing -- never once does he approach the vocal histrionics that could make some Live albums a little hard to bear -- that constitutes a genuine new wrinkle in their music. It's the sound of the band maturing, and while it's certainly more laid-back than any of their previous records, that low-key approach feels right for the music on Songs from Black Mountain and helps make it one of their most consistent and successful records.

[livefan1999]

This review in York Daily Record, ydr.com, really ticked me off. I wrote a fairly long e-mail telling him that I disagreed with his review and that with friends like him in Pennsylvania, it's a wonder Live has been as successful as they have.

But 'Songs from Live Mountain' plays it awfully safe
By JASON COX
Daily Record/Sunday News

June 5, 2006 — Live has been a bit shifty as of late - and we're not just talking about its new album's release schedule. First set for release in April, "Songs from Black Mountain" was pushed back to May, then June 13. Shortly after the band's "American Idol" appearance on May 24, the release date moved again, this time to today. But will the shiftiness pay off?

There's little argument that Live doesn't have as big a pile of chips at the musical card table as they did in the '90s. What do you do in that position - Go all in and try to bluff your way to a win or simply check your hand? With "Songs from Black Mountain, " Live chose the latter.

The first indication of this is the song length of each track on the album. Every song is between 2:58 and 3:54 in length - prime radio-friendly time. No more six-minute "White, Discussion" or "Pillar of Davidson" here.

The album opener, "The River," is also the first single off the disc. It's happy - guitar-playing-hippies-on-the-beach kind of happy - with soft guitars and "la-la-las" and "oooo babies" that'll make all the pre-teens swoon.

But what is there for the fans of yore?

It's not the cheesy, tug-at-your-heart-strings "Home," with sentimental bring-our-troops-home lyrics that sound like they were written for a seventh-grade creative writing class. And it's certainly not the mellow "Get Ready," which has frontman Ed Kowalczyk answering his own calls in the song. It's almost in the lyrically awful ("I need ya like a junkie needs a vein") "Sofia," which comes closest to their earnest sound of yesterdecade.

Perhaps your best bet in hearing the Live we know and love is in the almost anthem-rocky "All I Need," which drops in a just-funky/catchy-enough electric keyboard hook to keep me interested for the whole track. Also give a listen to the steady-paced "Show," which is one of the only songs to not feature Kowalczyk wailing away in his forced falsetto.

Right about now, you're asking "what about the guitar riffs?" And to that I respond, "What guitar riffs?" They're present, but bland through and through. The band members have ceded a lot of sound territory to Ed and they've suffered because of it.

There's simply not much bad to say about the album, but not a whole lot of good either. At this rate, however, someone is sure to raise the pot on Live soon, and at that point, it'll be up to the band to meet the raise or fold.

This post has been edited by livefan1999: Jun 5 2006, 11:36 pm