Unitron 'Gotta live, gotta live, gotta live, SHIT TOWNE'

Every time there's a popular music scene, other bands popular at the time end up getting lumped in even if they didn't quite fit. Live is one such band, who is often lumped in with grunge acts. While they can get pretty heavy, the closest they get to a real grungy riff is during the bridge of single All Over You.

I've always imagined and described Live as R.E.M. if they were a hard rock band. Is it a coincidence that R.E.M.'s Monster of the same year has a bit of a hard rock influence? Who knows, maybe they heard this album and were inspired.

Throwing Copper was Live's breakthrough album, and it's real easy to hear why. Rarely a weak moment, these guys are master songwriters, every song on here is memorable in at least some way. Ed Kowalczyk's powerful and unique voice is definitely a defining feature, and his lyrics are a nice blend of vague spiritual themes with stream-of-consciousness in the vein of bands like Underworld.

The singles (Selling the Drama, I Alone, Lightning Crashes, All Over You) are all fantastic and well-deserving of their popularity, but deeper cuts from the second half like Shit Towne, T.B.D., Stage, and White, Discussion are among my favorites as well. Shit Towne should be an alt-rock classic, with a great hook that'll stick with you for days. Patrick Dahlheimer plays some great bass in the mellow T.B.D. before it crescendos and the semi-funky White, Discussion. Stage is maybe the song that sticks out the most, fast and heavy, it kind of reminds me of an alt-rock version of W.A.S.P.

Throwing Copper is a classic album in every way. If Document is the peak of 80's alt rock, this is the peak of 90's alt rock.

aglasshouse Live is a band I've always found to be extremely unique for the hard rock genre, much in part due to their constant blending of Eastern and other influences and intriguing experimentation. This enjoyable era of the band lasted for a very long time, but seemed to very quickly and instantaneously dissipate as soon as they broke through to the 2000's. There was a shaky period for Live in the early 00's where they tried to juggle commercial rock, ballads, cultural styles, and grunge-y hard rock. Unfortunately the turnout was rather heavy handed and fell rather flat. Lyrically, the album is weaker compared to The Distance to Here (only two years earlier) and Throwing Copper. Whilst the latter had poetic, progressive-like lyrics they have now been stripped down to awful, shameless innuendo (Does he run you deep enough / to take you there (Baby) ~ Deep Enough) The music is uneven throughout, with clumsily placed and performed ballads at random periods (these ballads are some of the WORST I have ever heard- quite a feat). The sheer uncaring of these ballads I think is mainly because of how unfitting Kowalczyk's vocal style is to soft, Chicago-style waltzes.

Let's try and gravitate to something more in their line of work; the hard rock they present is actually very enjoyable when they actually show it off. 'Simple Creed' start with some power notes but it quickly has to tone down in order for the terrible lyrics to ensue. When the vocals and the band are able to work together there is ,such more of old Live to be heard. My favorite example is with 'Flow', where a driving riff leads both sections very well. But there still is the fact that the interesting composition-work is very much lost on V. Although aspirations are still there, both musicianship and music writing for this album don't allow it to come in full splendor like on their earlier material.

While the rather avant-garde intro to the album makes misleading promises of complexity, V is ultimately a boring experience that is superficial in many needed areas. Perhaps later releases will yield different results.

2.5 rounded to a 3.