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“The new year brought a new Steve Hackett tour ... The new tour
featured a new set list ...and now?... The new Live Archive album is
here!!!” That’s how the fifth release in Steve Hackett’s ambitious
Live Archive project was announced.
The new setlist should be taken with a pinch of salt, because 11 of
the 20 tracks on Live Archive 04 were already present in an
identical version on Live Archive 03. So it was looking with
expectation to the new tracks and it needs to be said, they are
rather disappointing.
CD1
opens right away with an enormous ‘miss-cue’. On Genesis
Revisited, Valley of the Kings slightly succeeds to evoke
the mysterious atmosphere which the title suggests. But all the
subtle frills disappear on this live performance and the weakness of
the composition – it’s actually a faint carbon copy of The
Steppes – painfully comes to the surface.
The
fragile intimity of Frozen Statues doesn’t stay upright
either on this live performance. In this stripped version (where are
the trumpets, where are the vocals?), this beautiful atmospheric
track is reduced to a long-winded intro for Slogans.
Circus of Becoming
was
the only highlight of the recent To Watch The Storms that was
missing on Live Archive 03. This lack has been filled up with
a good version although it doesn’t add anything to the original.
Hackett was in good voice, something he even keeps up for the whole
album.
Ace
of Wands,
from Hackett’s first solo album Voyage of the Acolite from
1975 is about the only track that withstood the ravages of time.
Hackett and co serve this extremely varied collage of rhythms and
melodies in a virtuoso, really brilliant version with Roger King on
keyboards as leading part, Rob Townsend on sax and flute and of
course the master himself. This is the absolute highlight of the
album.
Hammer in the Sand
is one of the typical mellifluous acoustical instrumentals à la Kim,
of which Hackett must have about two dozen on his repertoire. A
trifle that you forget before it’s over.
But
the first chords of Blood on the Rooftops immediately make
you sit upright again: Hackett ventures on the very best he ever
made with Genesis after Gabriel! A precarious venture, because the
original on Wind & Wuthering is so absolutely beautiful, that
every new performance, even by the author himself, has something of
a sacrilege. And alas... singer Gary O’Toole doesn’t even come in
the neighbourhood of the blood-curdling performance of Phil Collins,
certainly not in the choruses. A finishing stroke for this
instrumentally great version.
With
Fly on a windshield, we dig a bit deeper into the Genesis
archives. As in Firth of Fifth, Hackett doesn’t go beyond his
classic solo. It adorns him that he keeps exploring his rich Genesis
past, but he could have made a better choice. Why not a live
performance of Dance on a Volcano or Fountain of Salmacis,
which he brilliantly rearranged on Genesis revisited? Or, now we’re
dreaming away, why shouldn’t he do something with the fantastic
finale of All in a mouse’s night ?
If
You Can’t Find Heaven
is a new song that was submitted to a ‘road test’ during the tour in
the spring and that is known by the fans with the working title ‘A
Dark Night In Toytown’. The keyboards suggest a possible string
ensemble for the definitive version. It’s short and powerful, pretty
aggressive, completely in the style of the Darktown-CD. Not
bad, but not a classic to be.
Finally, Air-conditioned Nightmare is back on the setlist.
It’s a strong instrumental rocker from the Cured album, one of those
many forgotten solo works of Steve.
From
the beginning to the end, some wonderful music is made on this
Live Archive 04, but we knew that already from the Live
Archive 03. If you own the latter, you won’t find much surplus
value in the nine new tracks of Live Archive 04. Except
Ace of Wands and – for their documentary importance – the two
Genesis tracks.
An
advantage is that Live Archive 04 is the complete rendering
of one concert, that is, the final concert of the spring tour, on
April 3rd in Budapest. |
