Train - Alive at Last

I’m going to be completely honest with you. Almost every ‘live’ album I’ve ever bought I have eventually considered a complete waste of my money. The problem is I’m a sucker for CDs. It was for these reasons that after I handed over my $20 for Trains ‘Australian Tour Edition’ of ‘Save Me San Francisco’ (an album I already owned) which included the live CD ‘Alive At Last’ (something I didn’t own) I almost instantly regretted it. This may explain why I didn’t take the CD out of its packaging for something like 3 months. Last night I decided the 14 days I had to return my purchase was probably up and whether I liked it or not, I was now the (not so) proud owner of another (unnecessary) live album. So I removed the plastic and uploaded the songs onto iTunes, dreading the moment where I had to admit to myself that I’d yet again wasted my precious money. Everyone makes mistakes, don’t they?

Here comes the surprising part, so get ready folks. ‘Alive At Last’... It’s good! As in really good! This isn’t supposed to happen!!!!! Live albums are supposed to be composed of the songs we all love being massacred by their writers who need to spend hours in recording studios in order to hit the right notes; and therefore can’t sing live to save themselves. Either that or the studio recordings are so good that adding crowds of screaming fans in the background and the occasional off note makes the whole album sound like poor quality recordings that never sound quite right (sorry John Mayer). But instead of a cringe worthy waste of money, ‘Alive At Last’ made me wish I was back at the Forum Theatre watching Train live again. The mix is almost perfect (with the exception of a few sentences Pat says in the instrumental where all you can hear is the faint echo of his voice and a few screaming fans) and Pat hits every note without any trouble whatsoever. He even gets a bit of audience participation going on, thus clearly differentiating the live songs from their studio predecessors.

This is probably the part where I should list my favourite songs on the album, but I’m not sure I have any. The stand outs for me were probably the same songs that stood out on their studio albums – Save the Day, Calling All Angles, When I Look To The Sky and All American Girl – but that’s probably because they’re generally just great songs. For those who are Train fans, don’t worry, Drops of Jupiter is also on the album. I don’t think they’ll ever be able to escape that song... not that I really mind.

So get excited people! I have had my faith restored in live albums. Well, maybe not all live albums...