Live reveal new EP title - "Local 717" Options

[Bremang]

http://www.news-herald.com/article/HR/2018.../NEWS/180829624

Considering Live is known as a multi-platinum alt-rock band from the '90s, it was apropos that singer-guitarist Ed Kowalczyk referenced another touchstone from the decade when discussing the group's newly released single, "Love Lounge," which is a rocking affair that found the act plugging in its guitars and turning the amps to 11.

"I don't think anybody expected it," said Kowalczyk, calling from Mansfield, Massachusetts. "The fans were a little bit whiplashed by it, which was fun for us.

"We didn't expect to make a song like 'Love Lounge' and to sort of kick it up into that gear three years ago when we started putting the reunion together. It's like one of those, 'Life is a box of chocolates' kind of things."

Live finds itself at a new chapter of its 25-year-plus career, which includes more than 22 million albums sold worldwide, two No. 1 albums ("Throwing Copper" and "Secret Samadhi") and more than a dozen Top-20 alt-rock radio hits.

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After spending the better part of a decade away from Live, pursuing a solo career, Kowalczyk


rejoined the group a few years ago with an eye on new material. At that point, the Pennsylvania outfit could have taken the easy route — releasing a nostalgic, albeit schmaltzy, tune in hopes of finding airplay on adult-contemporary radio.

"I blame it all on Dave Grohl," Kowalczyk said. "We reconnected with the Foo Fighters a couple of times last year. 'Love Lounge' has a whole different tenor and energy. We also have EP 'Local 717' coming that's very much along the same lines.

"After this break, I didn't really want to do a sort of five-minute, mid-tempo meditation. We write like that all of the time. I wanted something that rocked, so we really took that, sort of digested it and just went into the studio and kicked the whole thing up a notch."

Fans attending Live's show Aug. 26 at Blossom Music Center — the band is opening for the Counting Crows — can expect to hear the new tune, as well as all of the group's hits ("Lightning Crashes," "I Alone," "All Over You" and "Lakini's Juice") and a Jimmy Reed cover ("Baby What You Want Me to Do").

This tour marks the third time Live has teamed up with Counting Crows, including a memorable 2000 show at Blossom. Kowalczyk said when the Adam Duritz-led act offered them the gig, it was a no-brainer for Live, which over the decades has lived and experienced all of the rock 'n' roll tropes — early success, creative differences, band acrimony, a breakup and an eventual well-received reunion.

"It's some kind of prefigured thing and a story that's been told a lot of times," Kowalczyk said. "But living it in my life, and I think I can speak for the band, the fact we're back together, nobody expected it for a long time. So there's a level of gratitude and joy on tour that I think the fans can really tell."

More importantly, playing up the title of the band's top-5 alt-rock hit "All Over You," it's pointed out that the fans aren't over Live.

"Nope, they're not over us yet," Kowalczyk laughed. "We're still rocking. They keep calling, we keep coming."

[swami]

Live
Local 717
Review by John Benson


*SPOILER ALERT*

It ain't great. But to stop there would not make for a very satisfying review, now would it? Surely not. But honestly....where to start? I guess with a bit of history, for context.

Casual listeners will remember Live for a somewhat brief, but very prominent career in the alternative rock world in the 1990s. Their breakthrough 1994 album "Throwing Copper" was by any measure an absolute masterpiece which shot them into international stardom, producing hit single after hit single to a dizzying extent. Any kid born in the early 1980s has memories of awkwardly slow-dancing to "Lightning Crashes" with their 6th grade crush as the song gradually increased in tempo to the point where you were ready to let go of your partner's waist a minute before the song's natural end because it was starting to feel inappropriate. That song and the album it came from eventually went on to sell 79 billion (with a 'b') copies which were cherished and spun for roughly 6 years until the band lost focus and went a bit squirrely. The band enjoyed moderate success with the moody and edgy 1997 album "Secret Samadhi" which proved to any and all doubting Thomi that they were not one-hit wonders. 1999's "The Distance to Here" saw a departure from the dark and sexy direction they'd taken, but satisfied the die-hards with a relentlessly uplifting and colourful album which was generally met with critical acclaim. This record had the historically interesting effect of ushering in a completely new wave of Live fans who had the distinct privilege of joining the scene just as it was about to take a sharp decline. Unfortunately, the seventh-inning stretch for Live turned out to be the bottom of the ninth. They would go on to release 3 more albums over the next 7 years with the original vocalist Ed Kowalczyk, with each successive release veering further from their roots, but not in the fun and rejuvenating way you'd hope a band would progress. With the exception of a meager few songs from their 6th album "Birds of Pray", the 2000s were a relentless dry ass-fucking to the devoted fans they'd amassed throughout their earlier works. After their criminally shallow 7th album "Songs From Black Mountain", which was essentially a gospel record commandeered by Kowalczyk which, I can only assume, was suffered through by the other band members with the aid of heavy sedatives, they finally disbanded ungracefully with Kowalczyk becoming the black sheep. This divided fans for the next 10ish years while the different factions pursued separate musical endeavors. Kowalczyk would go on to preach God to his daughters through lullabies disguised as albums and the other 3 members would try to recapture the spirit of genuine rock music that they contractually abandoned over the past decade. Neither venture would see a serious degree of recognition outside their already-established pockets of lemmings, as a once-unified fanbase now effectively functioned to polarize the discussion at every turn. So, we'd all accepted that Live's swansong "Songs From Black Mountain" was going to drown unceremoniously and the playground-style breakup of the original four would stain their reputation and prevent any chance of a successful reunion. But then 2016 happened, the year of Trump, and they announced that they'd reconciled their differences and they were going to make Live great again. Din' happen. What we got instead was a nearly 2-year vacuum of (ironically welcome) silence and finally in June of 2018 a studio recording of a new song, Love Lounge. This song was subject to more mixed reviews than competition salads in a special edition of Mixed Greens Quarterly. What? Nevermind.

Enter Local 717, the long-awaited 5-track EP that the previous run-on paragraph earnestly attempted to prepare you for. First of all, after nearly 2 years of promised new material, it wouldn't have been a stocking full of coal to receive a full-length album, but I'll excuse them that, especially after having heard what half an album sounds like. The EP kicks off with Love Lounge, which I can say after several dozen listens to the whole fucker at this point, is probably the best choice to open the record with. It's by no stretch of the imagination a great song, but it IS catchy and fulfills that desire to hear more, if only out of morbid curiosity. Sadly, the rest of the material teeters cautiously between actually rocking out and staying safely behind the shield of mediocrity. If credit is due anywhere, it's in sending this one to the front to represent the resurgence of Live. The predominant criticism of this EP is its lack of originality or persona. At least Love Lounge takes a risk. It ultimately fails, but it takes a risk. I can't help but imagine how different the collective view of this EP would have been if Ed wasn't permitted to throw the fucking ridiculous and distracting line "Shoot that fear!" into the chorus of the lead single. It is arguably a solid track if you just omit that grating nuance.

"Well, imagine it without the dumb line in it. Isn't it perfect now?"

Man, I wish you were onto something, but you're not. One seriously unforgivable oversight on this EP was the lack of production it went through. And I'm not talking just to audiophiles here. This EP suffers greatly from a terrible mixing job. Every track that endeavours to rock is loud beyond reason. More than half the whole EP feels more like an assault on the senses than it does a legitimate musical offering. Honestly, songs like "Be A Giver, Man" and "Brother" hardly deserve independent scrutiny because they're so depressingly middle-of-the-road. They're essentially interchangeable. Constantly loud, uneventful, uninspiring barrages of misguided direction. Both tracks are lyrically and musically unimpressive, the mix is overwhelming and muddy, and they leave you pondering quite what the fuck this band has been up to for the last two years. At best, these tracks pass for b-sides to albums the general population doesn't care to remember.

"But they're loud and abrasive tracks that rock hard without letting up, and that's what Live fans have been calling for!"

No it isn't. Unlistenable posturing as a replacement for the feeble half-assedness of the mid-2000s Live is not a compromise we were willing to make. Nobody agreed to this. In fact, the band themselves specifically disagreed to it by breaking up when the going got bad in a last-ditch attempt to salvage any semblance of respect they'd earned. Yet, the result of two years of uninhibited musical collaboration, Local 717, has only served to push them further into a creative corner. There are two other tracks on the EP which I haven't touched on yet. The closer is a cover of "Venus In Furs" by The Velvet Underground, which is a passable rendition, but ultimately not something by which I want to grade the EP. It's essentially a bonus track, but the focus is on the original material here. Pop a few Xanax because we're about to discuss the final track (not chronologically, but in terms of artistic merit) - Waterfall.

Gee willickers and boy howdy, does this one ever interrupt an already vapid listening experience and outright rape you aurally (...see what I did there?). No Live release would be complete without some reference to water, but WHY this hot mess? Listening to Waterfall flares up the PTSD that exists in all of us who sat through this band's demise. This song is apparently a recycled and slightly modified version of a song Ed Kowalczyk had written for his solo work during their separation. And man, it sure as shit reeks of that banal drivel. Did the rest of the members lose a bet? It's unconscionable that this track made the cut. It represents the precise sound that got hundreds of thousands, if not millions of former fans to jump ship. You just know in your heart of hearts that this was a last minute compromise brokered out of necessity to keep the peace.

In summation, I know I've been scathing in this review, and if I don't get lynched by Live fans who knew me and respected my devotion to the band in their formative and celebrated years, I'll consider that a personal victory. Local 717 is not entirely unlistenable. It has its moments, but finding them is about as enjoyable as fumigating head lice from your upholstery. This band...this same band is capable of so much more. I am not expecting them to return to the sound that saw them gracing the top of music charts across the globe. Those days are gone, and music has changed, but I'd like to see a bit more effort. If this handful of songs is seriously the peak of their creative ability after two years back together, then I am deeply disappointed. If Local 717 was a homework assignment, I'd make them repeat the grade.

I like the artwork though.

RATING: 2.5/10