Old 97's - Alive And Wired
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www.slantmagazine.com Rating: 0
mong the most reliable and, for whatever reason, relatively unheralded acts in alt-country for well over a decade, Old 97's have finally given in to pressure from their fans to release a live album. While their studio albums positioned the band as a less obtuse, more jagged version of Wilco—complete with a foray into power-pop on 2001's exceptional Satellite Rides—their live reputation has always maintained that Old 97's are a frenetic, sweaty bar-rock outfit. What Alive & Wired does best is reconcile the considerable charms of the band's studio output with the immediacy of their live shows' energy, and the Old 97's captured on this essential double-album is a band that lands at the midpoint between Wilco's high-minded songcraft and the ball-busting rock swagger of Drive-By Truckers. Recorded over two nights in June 2005 at Texas's legendary Greune Hall, the 30 performances on Alive & Wired chronicle each phase of the band's career (except for frontman Rhett Miller's phenomenal, unjustly slept-on 2002 pop album, The Instigator), incorporating straight-ahead rock numbers like "Wish The Worst" and "If My Heart Was A Car," more adventurous country-infused songs like "Won't Be Home," and power-pop anthem "King Of All The World" into a unified rock sound that demands loud volume. The album's lone drawback is a lack of new material—only "Iron Road"...
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