Customer Reviews

Ever After: Live

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Well what more can you say, the kings of the original gothic movement are still up there doing what they do best (PLAY LIVE). This album has got to be the best live album I have heard for many a year and covers all there great tracks from the early days right up until now. Standout points on the album to me are Heaven Knows (such a sweet lyric and translates globally I would imagine), Hands Across the water, Tower Of Strength (A classic even today it dosent sound dated!!!) and 1969 what more can you say (that banshee scream still gives me goosebumps from when I saw them in 1988 in scotland) Well done to Wayne and the boys for keeping going.

I want to preface my review with the statement that I've been a huge Mission UK fan since "Children" was released. I've endured the repeated milking of "greatest hits" releases with one or two new gems tucked in to justify the recycling of great music, and then been rewarded for my allegiance with occasional great new music that is both new and yet familiar ("Aura", "God is a Bullet"). I bought this live album approximately 8 years after its release, and all I can conclude is that the timing is probably fortunate. After listening to this recording, I would have questioned the value of spending more money on any "new" Mission (UK) release, thus missing some great new music. I love the original studio versions of the tracks which are included live in this release, and the actual live performance was probably very energizing and exciting, but the audio quality of almost half of this recording is anything but exciting. It sounds like something the soundboard guy pirated using a boom box, which was later captured and released as a legitimate soundboard recording. It starts out with stereo crowd and "intro" music, and then abruptly goes straight to a near-mono live recording for the first 6 tracks. On Track 7, it starts to approach something like live stereo recording, but remains mono-centric on tracks 8 and 9, and it only really hits true wide stereo on track 10. That's more than halfway through the 17 tracks before it becomes what I would consider "acceptable" for a recent (2000) live recording when listening through headphones,in terms of stereo separation. If this was a bootleg from the '60's or '70's, I'd be raving about the quality and clarity for all of it. But then again, that's 30-40 years, and unauthorized/audience recorded music, not a legitimate authorized recording. I don't have this issue with the tracks from #10 onward; it makes me think they were recorded at different times and venues (may be disclosed in the booklet, but my 1-year-old destroyed that soon after I bought it, so I can't verify...) Or maybe they kicked the soundboard guy in the @ss at the break after track 9 =)

Anyway, it's a collection of (modestly) different versions of many old favorites and some late '90s music, and I give credit to Wayne for being a powerful and talented vocalist (I never question whether his vocal tracks are live), but I expect more even recording quality throughout in a live recording from an artist that released such great quality studio recordings. I'm aware that Wayne/The Mission has recently released new complete live recordings of Children and other complete early albums; I can't comment on the quality of them but having been recorded in 2008-09, I would expect (hope?) that they will be higher quality than this live recording.

As a completist, I'm keeping this, but I doubt I'll listen to the first 6 tracks all that often relative to the respective studio recordings.