Album to concert
By You Can't Hear it on the Radio
November 22, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Most of us listen primarily to recorded music - albums and songs on record, compact disc or iPod. It's largely a controlled environment, with only live albums betraying the slightest possibility of a flaw in performance - and even some of those are heavily augmented. Artists rightly want to put their best foot forward, giving fans, the general public and critics the best possible version of their work.
As I listen to music, I tend to follow three different paths:
1. Listen, get hooked and add the album to my regular rotation (this can include obsessive-compulsive listening)
2. Listen, find something interesting and plan to come back and re-listen, eventually moving on to option 1 or 3.
3. Listen, get left cold and move on to new and better possibilities
In relative terms, very few albums hit the first path, a large number hit the second, and very few hit the third. Finding nothing interesting in an album is a fairly rare occurrence - being musically curious means finding something interesting in most things.
But when an artist hits that sweet spot of path number one, I really spend time with their album, listening repeatedly, absorbing it and giving it a special place in my heart. Usually, only a few albums each year hit that sweet spot. While my "best of the year" list may include 30 albums, I only really love a select few.
Typically, those select few albums are by artists I have a long-term relationship with or by an artist new to me. It's rare that an artist I've previously been unimpressed by blows me away on a later release. For those artists in the sweet spot, I do my best to see them in concert.
It's in a live setting that the album can come truly alive. When an album comes alive in concert, it REALLY comes alive. New texture and depth is added, new meaning is found and the album suddenly lives and breathes. Listening to it post-concert, I find myself appreciating the music more, giving it new attention and finding new parts to love.
On the other hand, in a live setting the music can remain inert - the product of a controlled environment. Most of the responsibility for that lies with the artist, who chooses to present it lifelessly, with no attempt to draw the audience into the music or do anything but reproduce the album as recorded. When that happens, it's hard to fight the feeling that it would have been easier to save money and time and just listen to the album again.
When this experience happens with one of my favorite albums or artists, it's highly disappointing. While it rarely puts me off listening to the artist, an uninteresting and uninspired concert performance can definitely diminish my love for them.
While it's been a great year for music and concerts, 2010 did include one of the more disappointing concert experiences I have had – one that is perfectly representative of what can go wrong in concert. Midlake was responsible for one of my favorite albums of the last few years -- 2006's The Trials of Van Occupanther - a beautiful, pastoral folk-rock album that I love to listen to on headphones while I daydream about living in the middle of the woods, growing a giant beard, and building something impressive with my hands. So I was tremendously excited for their February 2010 follow-up release - The Comfort of Strangers. While The Comfort of Strangers is no Van Occupanther, it is a decent follow-up and finds the band exploring new ways to grow and evolve their sound.
When I was able to get tickets to see Midlake in a small venue, I was very excited. Would we all move to the woods and grow beards and build things with our hands? Would we all sway in place, hypnotized by the beautiful melodies and flowing wall of sound? As it turns out, we could have done the latter. But not in the way I'd hoped. We could have easily enjoyed a similar presentation at home by listening to the album.
So what went wrong for Midlake? Most damaging, they played the songs essentially identically to the version on the album. Compounding that error is that they took their earnest, contemplative music and translated that over to their performance – if any of the members of Midlake have a sense of humor, the ability to understand irony, or the slightest spark of unpretentious personality, it was nowhere to be seen in their performances.
Now one of those two choices is survivable and would not ruin a concert. But together they kill what otherwise could have been an enjoyable concert. Generally, I’m able to find something good in every concert, but only a few really enliven the source material, and only a few really degrade the source material.
Aside from Midlake, the only other concert that has managed to make me feel less interested in an artist I’d previously like was seeing former Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar live. Never has a more dour person performed a more lifeless show that appeared to result from someone pointing a gun to their head and commanding him to perform.
On the other hand, I can think of many great concert experiences that have taken an album I already liked or loved and made it soar in a way that I would never have known without the concert experience. In 2010 alone, I can think of at least six concerts I attended that gave me greater appreciation for an album:
Wolf Parade – who took one of my favorite albums of 2010 and made it my favorite album of 2010.
Ra Ra Riot – who surprised me by being able to pull off their sound in concert and expand on it.
Jonsi – who provided the most intensely soaring concert of the year.
Arcade Fire – who brought passion and intensity to even their most delicate works.
The National – who took what could otherwise be sleepy, sedate live songs and added a confident ferocity
The New Pornographers – who effortlessly bounced from hook to hook and melody to melody with wit and charm
What are some of your best and worst album to concert experiences?
--Noah
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