The Best Live Albums of 2010

Artist: Kanye West

Album: VH1 Storytellers

Label: Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella

US Release Date: 2010-01-05

UK Release Date: 2010-01-25

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Kanye West
VH1 Storytellers

At once grandiose, manic, self-reflexive, and, at bottom, an exhibition of a magnificent music-maker, Kanye West’s performance on VH1 Storytellers is a complete embodiment of the artist’s schizophrenic persona. Just when West is making your head shake with his rash claims (“My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live”; “O.J. Simpson, amazing!”; “I get my quotes from movies, because I don’t read”), he throws you through a loop and exhibits genuine heart-on-the-sleeve introspection. For instance, after a riveting performance of “Flashing Light”, West expresses understandable ire for the doctor who performed his mother’s fatal surgery: “Now that my momma’s passed, would she really want me to put myself in a situation for going to jail for killing him?” In one of the most peculiar performances in recent memory, West seems to be one-step from spiraling completely out of control throughout the gig, but leverages himself with the source of all his bravado: a catalog of astounding songs.

 

Artist: Mogwai

Album: Special Moves

Label: Rock Action Records

US Release Date: 2010-08-24

UK Release Date: 2010-08-23

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Mogwai
Special Moves

Recorded during a three-night residency in April 2009 at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, Glasgow’s post-rock vets Mogwai touch on their entire six-album catalog on Special Moves, from fan favorites “Mogwai Fear Satan” and “Like Herod”, to new cuts like “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead” and “I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School”. Playing out like a greatest hits release, Special Moves is a commendable introduction for the Mogwai newbie and a sonic snapshot of what the band does best: quiet/loud juxtapositions, oddly-shifting time signatures, otherworldly soundscapes, and multilayered guitar assaults. After 15 years together, the testament heard at the outset of Mogwai’s first LP — “If the stars had a sound, it would sound like this” — continues to serve as the band’s aesthetical objective.

 

Artist: The Stooges

Album: Have Some Fun: Live at Ungano’s

Label: Rhino

US Release Date: 2010-11-22

UK Release Date: 2010-11-22

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The Stooges
Have Some Fun: Live at Ungano’s

It’s been a glorious year for Stooges fans, one in which the band hit the road with Raw Power guitarist James Williamson, the aforementioned 1973 classic was reissued and remastered as a box set, and they finally received a criminally overdue induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But buried beneath the accolades, tour and reprises was the late-year release Have Some Fun: Live at Ungano’s. A sonically muddled hot mess, it’s a recently unearthed reel-to-reel tape recording of a Stooges show during a four-night residency at the Ungano’s nightclub in New York City. Recorded just after the release of Fun House, the band rips through every cut from the album except “L.A. Blues”, and it is also contains a previously unreleased “10-minute-plus psychedelic, freak out jam” entitled “Have Some Fun/My Dream Is Dead”. Though it’s not anywhere near as essential as the band’s first three studio albums, Have Some Fun is nonetheless a rousing artifact of one of the most intensely ripped-off live acts in rock’s history.

 

Artist: LCD Soundsystem

Album: London Sessions

Label: DFA

US Release Date: 2010-11-05

UK Release Date: 2010-11-05

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LCD Soundsystem
London Sessions

Eight years after the release of “Losing My Edge” and without one major misstep, James Murphy has not only established himself as a recording studio maestro, but also as the ringleader of a world-class live band. Thankfully, LCD Soundsystem has finally documented their live-act strengths, releasing a John Peel-style in-studio performance they recorded in one day in London. Sounding tight, self-assured, and passionate on every single song, the performance runs through highlights from all of the band’s studio albums, along with the B-side gem “Yr City Is a Sucker”. From a rocked-up “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House”, to the ESG-esque “Pow Pow”, to the goose-bump inducing “All My Friends”, London Sessions is a wonderful mesh of the band’s reference-heavy sound. But as fantastic as London Sessions is, it’s also a heartbreaking reminder that the proposed retirement of LCD Soundsystem as a band is a bit of a pop culture tragedy.

 

Artist: The Jackson 5

Album: Live at the Forum

Label: Hip-O Select

US Release Date: 2010-06-29

UK Release Date: 2010-08-02

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The Jackson 5
Live at the Forum

Live at the Forum brings to light two previously unreleased Jackson 5 live shows from the Los Angeles Forum, with one from their first national tour in 1970, and their triumphant return to the venue in the summer of 1972. In both shows, Michael Jackson and his band of brothers come off as loose, exuberant, and down right funky. On display are surging performances of all the hits: “I Want You Back”, “I’ll Be There”, “ABC”, “The Love You Save”, and “Never Can Say Goodbye”. Also weaved into the fold are wonderful covers, including of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”, Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright”, and James Brown’s “There Was a Time”. And when Michael declares at the outset of “Who’s Lovin’ You” that “don’t nobody have the blues like I have”, your heart will sink with its foreshadowing of the King of Pop’s final years. For those that always written off the Jackson 5 as nothing more than a banal boy band, Live at the Forum proves that the brothers were the upper crust of 1970s pop.

 

5 -1

Artist: Leonard Cohen

Album: Songs from the Road

Label: Sony/Legacy

US Release Date: 2010-09-14

UK Release Date: 2010-09-13

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Leonard Cohen
Songs from the Road

After Leonard Cohen’s ex-manager allegedly embezzled the majority of his life savings, the Canadian singer-songwriter ended his 15-year hiatus from the road and headed off on a tour that’s lasted now almost three years. What’s more, last year he released back-to-back live albums, Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 and Live in London. But the husky-voice lyricist’s catalog is so deep with gems it really doesn’t matter if he’s milking them for all they’re worth. On his latest live release, Songs from the Road, a CD/DVD combo that features cuts from performances everywhere from North America to all over Europe to Israel and just about everywhere in-between, Cohen shines throughout, but particularly on his performances of “Chelsea Hotel”, “Lover, Lover, Lover”, and “Bird on the Wire”. And by the time you reach the bard’s recital of “Hallelujah” from the Coachella Music Festival in 2009, there’s no question he’s still one of the most gripping performers still slugging it out on stage.

 

Artist: The White Stripes

Album: Under Great White Northern Lights

Label: Third Man

US Release Date: 2010-03-16

UK Release Date: 2010-03-15

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The White Stripes
Under Great White Northern Lights

Following the 2007 release of their return-to-roots sixth album Icky Thump, the White Stripes embarked on a tour to play a gig in every single province and territory in Canada, “from the ocean to the permafrost”. The end result? The raucously epic Under Great White Northern Lights. Released as both a documentary and a live album, it’s a scorching survey of the Detroit duo’s live show. From opener “Let’s Shake Hands”, which lunges out from the speakers, grabs you by the jugular, and refuses to let go, to a surging closing rendition of “Seven Nation Army”, there’s barely a slack moment in the 16-song punk blues showcase. And though the band appears to be in top form on the album, a few months after their trek across the North American country, the duo cancelled the remaining 18 dates of the tour, with Meg White citing “acute anxiety” issues as the reason. Since then, while Jack White has become rock’s Zelig, Meg has all but disappeared. With luck, Under Great White Northern Lights won’t become the White Stripes’ swansong, but another chapter in their devotional tome to Bo Diddley’s essential rhythm.

 

Artist: David Bowie

Album: Station to Station: Special Edition (Live Nassau Coliseum ’76 Concert)

Label: EMI Music

US Release Date: 2010-09-28

UK Release Date: 2010-09-27

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David Bowie
Station to Station: Special Edition (Live Nassau Coliseum ’76 Concert)

By late 1975, rock’s great eccentric had already killed off a dizzying succession of guises — most notably his Ziggy Stardust persona — and was up to his second threat to permanently walk away from rock ‘n’ roll. Of course, the retirement talk was just another ruse, with the following year finding Bowie releasing Station to Station and returning as his latest alter ego, the Thin White Duke, “throwing darts in lovers’ eyes”. Reinvigorated by cocaine, Nietzsche, and krautrock, Bowie subsequently embarked on a globetrotting tour that garnered some of the best live reviews of his career. Packaged along with this year’s re-release of Station to Station is an account of one of those stops, Bowie’s triumphant performance at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. Long a bootlegger favorite, the Nassau Coliseum show is a run-through of all of Bowie’s incarnations up to that point, seamlessly traveling through his space classics like “Life on Mars?” and “Five Years”, through his plastic soul years with “Fame”, to Bowie as an arena-rocker on “Stay”. At bottom, the Nassau show is a fantastic testament of the Duke’s prowess on stage before he shed that façade as well and moved on to Berlin to shake up his entire aesthetical approach, from top to bottom.

 

Artist: Otis Redding

Album: Live on the Sunset Strip

Label: Stax

US Release Date: 2010-05-18

UK Release Date: 2010-09-27

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Otis Redding
Live on the Sunset Strip

Up until the release of this two-CD set, Otis Redding’s exquisite performances during a four-day residency at the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood were unfortunately broken apart and littered throughout various live releases, including Otis Redding in Person at the Whisky a Go Go and Good to Me: Recorded Live at the Whisky, Vol. 2. On Live on the Sunset Strip, the last three sets of the April 1966 performances are finally presented in their entire chronological order. With a polished stage show that still displayed a go-for-broke swagger, it’s utterly mind blowing that Redding was a mere 24 years old when these performances took place. Backed by his own ten-piece road band led by saxophonist Bob Holloway (the Bar-Kays didn’t link up with the soul legend until 1967), Redding rips through his soon-to-be classic catalog and covers James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”, the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”, and his live staple, the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”. On the whole, the Sunset Strip shows are an essential record of soul at its best.

 

Artist: The Who

Album: Live at Leeds: 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Collectors Edition

Label: Geffen/Universal

US Release Date: 2010-11-23

UK Release Date: 2010-11-15

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Not only is Live at Leeds an essential document of the Who’s vehement live show, it’s also the band’s finest album. Recorded on Valentine’s Day 1970 at Leeds University in England, the original six-song LP showcased the band at their “Maximum R&B” primal best. The recording is at once a vital illustration of how their sound served as the blueprint for 1960s garage rock, and how it also laid the groundwork for punk and heavy metal. From the opening salvo “Young Man Blues” to the one-two punch that is the encore — a sprawling 16-minute “My Generation” and the amphetamine-fueled ride of “Magic Bus” — Nik Cohen wasn’t treading on hyperbole in The New York Times when he called it the “best live rock album ever made.” To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the live opus, Geffen/Universal has released a Leeds cornucopia: the previously available show in its entirety on two CDs, a vinyl reproduction of the original six-track album, a seven-inch single of “Summertime Blues/Heaven & Hell”, and the Who’s subsequent show at Hull. Yes, Live at Leeds has been reissued a number of times, with more and more in-between song banter tacked on, and the latest release still places the setlist out of order (i.e., the Tommy set takes up the entire second CD, when in reality “Summertime Blues”, “Shakin’ All Over”, “My Generation”, and “Magic Bus” were played after the rock opera). But the shining nugget of the reissue is the Hull performance. Previously unreleased, the show was played the night after Leeds — and was the set the band originally intended to release as a live album — but technical issues, including the absence of John Entwistle’s bass lines on the reel recording, forced them to put out the Leeds show instead (his bass parts were pulled from Leeds to complete Hull’s first four tracks). And while Live at Leeds is the more extraordinary set of the two, Live at Hull is nearly as mesmerizing. Taken together, the recordings are some of the boldest statements ever made on the transformative power of rock music.