Search - Rush :: Snake & Arrows Live

An album as good as SNAKES AND ARROWS deserved a better live

Christopher Culver | 03/30/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Rush used to release a live album every four studio albums, but starting with 1998's DIFFERENT STAGES they've been issuing live recordings left and right. I've found this practice dubious, but nonetheless I picked up SNAKES AND ARROWS LIVE, a document of two concerts in Rotterdam in the autumn of 2007. Unfortunately, the result



The most immediately apparent flaw is the sound quality. SNAKES AND ARROWS, while not a shining example of balanced mixing, nonetheless rose above the "loudness wars" catastrophe of VAPOR TRAILS. Unfortunately, SNAKES AND ARROWS LIVE drops us almost all the way back to a pit of no dynamic range, compression, and aural fatigue. Alex Lifeson had a hand in mixing this, and I wish he hadn't, as he turns almost every recording he manages into a slurry. There are a few exceptions, namely the instrumentals, which are not perfect but nonetheless enjoyable. The second killer is the quality of Geddy's voice. It would be unreasonable to expect him to hit the strident high tones of the band's 1970s output, but it seems like he's even approximating the pitches of fairly recent songs. Certainly his voice has declined since I last saw the band live in 2002.



Had I actually gone to the concert and had the whole live experience--or at least were watching the DVD on a home cinema--instead of judging this merely from my stereo, I probably would have enjoyed this set a lot more. The band brought a few neglected gems out of their catalogue, such as "Digital Man" and "Between the Wheels", and they play plenty from SNAKES AND ARROWS, which is a pretty strong album. I can't recommend this unless you are a Rush completist."

More of the same... below average sound quality

M. Kupper | Seattle, WA | 05/14/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"How about playing some tunes that we never hear live, rather than the same setlist for every new live album? Other than the new album material, we've heard ALL of these songs on other live albums, and that sucks. Rush isn't The Dead, they don't improv much or change song structures around. So hearing the same songs played the same way time and time again gets OLD. About as OLD as these guys feel at this point. What about songs like Losing It, Camera Eye, Countdown, etc. Would love to hear those for ONCE! Also, the mix on all the audio that Alex seems to get involved with seems to end up muddy and over compressed. Perhaps you need to get another engineer involved? The Replay DVD set was practically ruined by Alex. :(

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