Hey man, well this is Babylon and you can fire out on a bus to the outside world

Soul Coughing: New York, NY 16.08.99

After El Oso, Soul Coughing did one final tour before they called it a day, and in 2005 they decided to release five official live albums to document the band at their various stages of life. This New York show from August 16, 1999, was the very end of the final tour. This is the point at which they had smoothed out a lot of their weirdness and achieved a reasonable level of commercial success, and were honed to the height of their musical prowess.

This show starts out with El Oso’s opening track “Rolling”, which is a good road-burned bit of propulsion to start things out. Yuval Gabay is powerful on the drums, and he is the throughline for everything here, the mathematical complex of rhythm that everything else hangs on, practically a live rendition of a hyperactive d’n'b programming. Irresistible Bliss is the neglected middle child album here, with most of the songs coming from the debut and El Oso. “Bus to Beelzebub” is done massive and overpowering with the Raymond Scott “Powerhouse” sample pumped up giant-size and with the ‘Yellow no. 5/voulez-vous the bus’ section becoming a manic jazz breakdown. “True Dreams of Wichita” disperses the laid-back groove of the original recording and recasts it pensive. Mike Doughty freestyles a bit during “Circles” to nice effect. “Blue Eyed Devil”, “St. Louise” and “Miss the Girl” are thundering and awesome, and “Maybe I’ll Come Down” is pushed just slightly off-key into a weird, drone-space. “Mr. Bitterness” has gained a lot of insanity since its original recording, piled high with samples and noise, sung with new emphasis, rolling seamlessly into a call-and-response version of “Super Bon Bon” that gradually descends into total noise to close the show proper. Then, ‘Spontaneity thy name is encore!’ and the band’s awesome signature song, “Screenwriter’s Blues” in all its massive glory, as well as a fantastic, vigorous take of “Moonsammy” and finally, a ‘like fucking screeching incredibly loud church!’ singalong version of “Janine” to close the night.

Beside some issues with volume drops in the midsection of the album, the sound fidelity is damn fine for what is essentially an after-the-fact official bootleg. This is more or less a career retrospective, and it does a fine job at that, if unfortunately skipping any of their b-sides or rarities (and no “Casiotone Nation”!). In any case, a terrific way to close out an all-too-short but brightly shining career.

80% => ****

~ by jshopa on June 9, 2008.