Although I’ve never been entirely sold on ‘Live’ albums (why buy pasty approximations of things you already own on record?) occasionally, just occasionally, there’s one comes out that grips you in a way that the original album doesn’t. Sometimes this is down to something as simple as an alternative running order, sometimes it’s having songs extended beyond their natural running time, sometimes it’s because the band totally reworks them; sometimes its simply because you were there. With ‘Ononokos’ it’s none of those. ‘Ononokos’works as a concert album because the studio albums failed to provide adequately for the deep, sprawling, orchestral magic of the band’s interstellar rock and the wilderness that grows therein. Albums like ‘Z’ were built to be played live. Putting these tracks in the studio was rather like putting a straightjacket on them. These songs needed a place to thrive.
Mixed by Michael Brauer (Bob Dylan, Coldplay) ‘Ononokos’ draws on the band’s four full-length releases, reviving them the with as much expansiveness as both stadium and imagination allow. The result is more muscular, more decisive and more ROCK than anything recorded by the band thus far, bringing the widescreen potential of the Kentucky five-piece bang into focus and smearing a blurry, otherwordly sheen across their music.
The Live Album comes backed by an ‘Ononokos’ DVD, directed by Sam Erickson. The band tours in the fall.