Death By Stereo

Umphrey's McGee | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 13, 2011)
• Original Release Date: 2011
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: ATO RECORDS / RED
• ASIN: B005E7AOAU
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,633 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Miami Virtue

2. Domino Theory

3. Search 4

4. Booth Love

5. The Floor

6. Wellwishers

7. Dim Sun

8. Deeper

9. Conduit

10. Hajimemashite

Editorial Reviews

Chicago-based Umphrey's McGee returns this fall with a new studio album, Death By Stereo, available on 9/13 via ATO Records. Over the past 13 years, the group has built a rabid fan base through endless touring and more than 120 shows a year. They have released 11 albums, nearly every live show for 6+ years and sold more than 1.5 million digital tracks. Death By Stereo is the much-anticipated followup album to their critically-acclaimed 2009 studio release Mantis, which was praised in top outlets like Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Mantis included a groundbreaking pre-order campaign, which sold over 8000 units in the first week and debuted at #62 on the Billboard chart.

Death By Stereo is a hybrid of what makes Umphrey's McGee so appealing to a wide spectrum of music fans. Filled with a healthy combination of focused, hard-hitting rock songs & head bobbing, groove-driven tracks, the record has something for everybody. The new album features a smattering of road-tested fan favorites as well as some of the slickest, unreleased compositions the band has released to date.

Umphrey's McGee's constantly evolving sound channels a wide spectrum of influences while still preselVing their distinct voice through crafty songwriting. With a massive repertoire of originals and note-perlect covers, their live shows are like flipping through the presets on your radio dial. Their A.DD. approach to ''progressive improvisation'' utilizes a set of Zappa-inspired hand signals allowing them to orchestrate their melodic creations on the fly.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Very good, but definitely not their greatest album. February 25, 2012

By C

Format:MP3 Music|Amazon Verified Purchase

I wish Amazon's star system had half stars, because I would definitely give this one a 3.5 - I just feel that 4 stars is pushing it.

UM is one of my favorite bands, hands down. Unfortunately, after seeing them 4 or 5 times in the 2 years leading up to this album, there were only 2 or 3 songs that I hadn't already heard before (and yeah, I purchase their live shows...) All the songs on this album are pretty good, but there are only two songs that I keep coming back to listen to album this for: The Floor and Hajimemashite. The rest are just decent UM songs, but seem somewhat forgettable.

I love all of the band's previous albums, and still listen to them quite often. Death By Stereo... not so much. Again, it's not a bad album. It's infinitely better than 99% of the rock music that is out today.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Darn Good September 24, 2011

By Eric A. Stanley

Format:Audio CD

Yes, I understand Umphrey's McGee is a predominantly live band and thus their albums should be critiqued with a grain of salt. Unfortunately for me I live in an area of the country where the band rarely visits, so all i am left with is their live recordings and albums to fuel my personal mental concerts on my drive home from work.

What has left me and my friends disappointed with their previously released albums is that their first 2 were so darn good. Local Band Does OK and Anchor Drops are both infinitely listenable monsters where every track simply kicks a$$ and creates a great listening experience. The quality of songwriting on those two albums set the bar so high that the albums that followed paled in comparison (although still quite good).

So how does Death By Stereo stack up? The new album combines some newly explored territory with older styles to create an interesting mix. Old school Umprheys and jam fans in general will like Track 3 - Search 4, Track 5 - The Floor, Track 9 - Conduit (what do constellations and candied yams have to do with one another?), and Track 10 - Hajimeshite. Umph works some good studio magic on a few other tracks that will get your whiteboy toes tapping and head grooving, such as Track 1 - Miami Virtue and the P-funkesque Track 4 - Booth Love.

In Summary - One notch below Anchor Drops and Local Band, but albums like those only come along a few times in a bands career so this album is still amazing.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Crushingly disappointing followup to Mantis March 19, 2012

By Great_Silence

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

Wow, I can't believe all the glowing reviews for this album. Mantis, UM's previous album, is an absolute masterpiece and one of my top 5 favorite albums of all time. Now, I LOVE Umphrey's. They are one of my favorite bands, without question. However, I am not some fanboy who will blindly rave about everything my favorite bands produce. And let me tell ya, this album is crap.

I think the problem is twofold. First, as the Amazon product description so aptly asserts: "Death By Stereo is a hybrid of what makes Umphrey's McGee so appealing to a wide spectrum of music fans. Filled with a healthy combination of focused, hard-hitting rock songs & head bobbing, groove-driven tracks, the record has something for everybody." In other words, its a compromise. Umphrey's is not a band for everyone, and is not the sort of band that should be aiming for that. The result is a classic "remote control CD", or in other words, one in which you constantly have the remote in your hand waiting to skip over the many tunes that don't appeal to you in order to find the few that do. Mantis doesn't have a single song that I regularly skip. On the other hand, I skip over half of this album.

Problem #2 is even more serious. Mantis was recorded over a period of about 15 months, and the results reflected that. The song structure was excellent and the production values were FANTASTIC. It felt like an ALBUM, not a random collection of songs. Death By Stereo, on the other hand, was rushed in a big, big way. The label wanted them to produce another album in order to capitalize on the success of Mantis (let's face it, most jam bands don't sell many albums, and Mantis actually sold), so they pressured them to throw this one together. That's why the resulting album is a disorganized mish-mash of songs they've been playing for years (with a few exceptions) that don't fit into a cohesive album AT ALL. This thing is seriously all over the damn place. Also, the production values, compared to Mantis, are decidedly subpar. It sounds like it was recorded in about two weeks at Joe Schmo's Music Factory in Anytown, USA. The production is flat, generic and soulless.

If you're one of those UM fans that either A) doesn't play an instrument and doesn't know a whole lot about music or B) blindly accepts anything they do as genius, even if its not that good, you will probably love Death By Stereo anyway. However, if you are a musician or an even moderately discerning fan, this album will disappoint in every possible way after the near-perfection of Mantis. Save your money for tickets to their live shows.