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.

[NectarDan]

http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/music_review.asp?ID=883

Live
Songs From Black Mountain
Epic, 2006

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Live has drained any sense of drama from its music. Ironic, considering the group's breakthrough mid-'90s smash "Lightning Crashes" is built upon the wonderfully overwrought theatrics that marked so many bands making it big in the Grunge Decade. While steadily becoming a colorless, indifferent musical act, frontman Ed Kowalczyk has also chased his mounting fascination with deities of all stripes into an ever-darker abyss; first making known his love of pseudo-religious iconography with the puzzling 1997 semi-masterpiece Secret Samadhi, Kowalczyk has only amplified the gobbledy-gook with each successive release. Fond of fashioning lyrics that seem profound when sung but ridiculous when read, Live has become a parody of its muscular, sleek, and righteously angry former self. Songs From Black Mountain, the band's first collection of new material since the backward glance of Awake: The Best Of Live, is a remarkable modern rock achievement since none of the songs sound dissimilar. Twelve tracks of AOR-ready pabulum that run together like grade-Z lunchroom oatmeal: lumpy, gray, and completely tasteless. The songs are mercifully brief, none clocking in at longer than four minutes, and strap on a bib—the lowlights are plentiful. The howling blandness of anti-war ditty "Home," the plodding "Get Ready," the suffocating sweetness of "Love Shines (A Song For My Daughters About God)," and the piercing, overwrought "Mystery" are but a few of the sonic potholes marring this tired disc. As someone who endlessly spun the inexplicably catchy Secret Samadhi and counts Throwing Copper among the great albums of the '90s, it's sad to see a once-promising band reduced to dribbling out a mewling, half-baked effort such as this, an album with no redeeming value beyond soundtracking your next visit to Supercuts.

1.5 out of 5 stars

Preston Jones
© slant magazine, 2006.

[livefan1999]

quote: aLiveinNorway
"Sorry to disapoint you livefan1999, heres another bad rewiev. From a Norwegian papper called "Dagsavisen". SFTBM gets 1 out of 6.
I remember this paper gave SS 5 out of 6...but that was back in the glory days. Thanks to my mother in law for the translation."


Hey, no problem on the negative review. At least from my point of view in reading them. I have my opinion of SFBM and it is a good one. I enjoy the cd.

The only reason I hate all of the negative reviews is I wonder how they impact Ed and the rest of the band. Judging from the interviews Ed has been doing on radio and other press media, as well as comments I've seen made by other band members, they're thumbing their noses at the negative reviews and continuing to move forward.

There are good reviews out there and bad reviews. I tend to forget the negative ones fairly quickly and remember the good ones. Here is the latest that falls into the positive category:

Long Island Press - 7/20/06

Arts & Entertainment - All the Music News That's Fit for Print

» Live "Love Shines (A Message for My Daughters)"
[from the Epic/Red Ink release Songs From Black Mountain]

Live's Ed Kowalczyk has certainly had his share of overly earnest moments ("The Dolphin's Cry" anyone?), but despite the cynical brickbats tossed by many a hip-leaning scribe, this ode to Kowalczyk's kids is a heartfelt message of hope, wrapped in acoustic guitars and sumptuous harmonies, that rings especially true given how much grimmer current events have gotten of late.

This post has been edited by livefan1999: Jul 20 2006, 4:11 pm

[aLIVEinNORWAY]

I have my opinion of SFBM and it is a good one. I enjoy the cd.

Thats my opinion too, and Love Shines is