The Good, the Bad and the Queen, the self-title debut, has been the best album I have heard so far this year. In April of 2007, they put an out live EP in New York while on tour. It was part of the “live for itunes” series. (“itunes” is Apple’s popular mp4 music store.)
The band played five tracks:
The History Song
Herculean
Behind the Sun
Natural Spring
Three Changes
In many ways this EP was better than the album. Of course, the album has more tracks. However, this EP sounded better. Even though it was a live recording, you can’t really tell that there was an audience present, expect for the claps at the start. What I really like about this recording was how clear everything sounded. The strings sounded beautiful here as oppose to the how they sound on the album, which pushed down and flatted in the background. The vocals, acoustic guitar, and electric bass sounded like you were in the same room.
The band had been touring for a while before they preformed this live session and you can hear how tight they were playing together at this point. Of course, the band members are all stars. Paul Simonon of the Clash, Damon Albarn of Gorillaz and Blur, Simon Tong of Verve, and Tony Allen make this band. All are all veterans and masters of their craft.
I am not normally a fan of these “live for itunes” series. I think of these itunes only recordings as a waste of money, because they seems to be neither a real live performance with a big audience to affect the music nor a proper studio performance where everything as perfect as it can be. However, this time, you are either getting a brilliant supplement to the original album or a well made sample of the band, depending on how you look at it.
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