This album makes me feel old: last time I rember there being a Live at Royal Albert Hall, it came from Spiritualized, less than a year off the strength of their American breakthrough. If you were in my freshman dorm in 1998, well, I don't apologize for trying to push Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space on you. And now, a decade later, Cinematic Orchestra has their very own Live at the Royal Albert Hall less than a year removed from their American breakthrough: an episode of "Grey's Anatomy" that had my fiancée asking if I had an mp3 of "To Build a Home".
This album might make *you * feel old, too: when you take into account the kind of stuff Cinematic Orchestra did before Ma Fleur on Ninja Tune (not to mention Portishead's Third), you might start thinking that there's enough seedlings for a trip-hop revival, the sorta-genre that was roundly mocked even when it supposedly existed. Though they only got started in the late 1990s, they still kinda fit in-- if you're unfamiliar with these guys, they're possibly the easiest band to review because their two most fitting adjectives are contained within the band name itself. And while this serves as a decent, but unbalanced (in terms of album representation) Cinematic Orchestra sampler, it's also a throwback to the downtempo lifestyle music that labels were all too happy to throw cash at in the post-Dummy sweepstakes. And I don't think I need to remind you that for every "6 Underground", you got Formica Blues five times over.
Portishead is actually worth keeping in mind, since they made a similar release with PNYC: Roseland NYC Live, a curtain-revealing look at a band previously known for its hermetic nature and shying away from concert performance. No expense was spared-- leader Jason Swinscoe outfitted Cinematic Orchestra with an army of vocalists, a 24-piece orchestra, and a venue that arguably belies their profile. It's an unyieldingly classy recording, its rich and sparkling tone impervious to shitty earbuds, car stereos, and computer speakers. Play it on a high-class hi-fi and gold coins will shoot out of your speakers. This is particularly true of the jazzier numbers; "Child Song" shifts from 7/4 to 5/4 without making a big fuss about it, and Swinscoe's DJing is seamlessly incorporated towards the end. "Man With the Movie Camera" doesn't fare quite as well, even though there's a pretty neat drum solo in the middle, as well as some free-time horn/turntablism noise providing the most avant-garde moment. But it's hard to recommend multiple listens with its forbidding, nearly 12-minute run time.
Live would've been just fine as opulent sonic wallpaper, but the reason Ma Fleur was such a bore is even more pronounced in this form, in particular, Swinscoe's choice of vocalists. Surprisingly enough, his calling card gets the most subtle seasoning; the studio version of "To Build a Home" felt like the result of Swinscoe stuck off the realness of I Am a Bird Now and thinking, "piece of piss, how hard could it be?" Here, it's stripped of most of the soppy melodrama and turned into something that approaches Astral Weeks in terms of pastoral acoustic and sympathetic string use (not to mention, a bit of ramble).
But otherwise, Swinscoe has the unfortunate preference for full-blast divas. You know, the type where merely singing "How near?" isn't enough when you could say "HOW NEAR? hownearhownearhownearhownear" in an overly dramatic melisma. Swinscoe has unsurprisingly gone on record saying how each of their songs is supposed to accompany an unwritten movie, but the vocal numbers tend to be both slight and overbearing; a film with this much telegraphed emotion would be impossible to stomach for even the most chick-flick hardened.
Not that it's ever unpleasant on record, but goddamn-- doesn't this make you feel old? Used to be this sort of thing (trip-hop or not) was meant to accompany druggy sex or sexy drugs, or at the very least, some sort of noir danger or last-call malaise. At this point, it's the new soundtrack to cocktail hour, and everyone's the designated driver.
