There’s a certain pressure with a live album. Music like any strong art form is built on illusion. A magic trick of expression and convincing your listener that they’re on the same page as the singer and narrator. Live albums separated from the concert experiences often seek to remove the artificial and encompass the soul.
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/foolishdeep/?hl=en
Foolish Deep (ironically named since their work carries much substance) and their new album “Live Sessions”, finds the group rejuvenated after a break following their last 2020 release. Many of the songs from that last album are present in “Live Sessions” but given a new coat of paint, or should I say been given some paint thinner to expose the soul. Opener “Looking for the Moon” is a tone setting piece about entrapment of the environment. The band is formed in LA, so it makes sense that they too would express a sense of stifling that is also transcended in the song to include a longing for a meaningful relationship.
The atmospheric quality here and in the other songs is wonderful and there’s an almost ethereal quality in one way or another thanks to its fade and breaks before climax. The opener also has a stellar guitar solo to boot.”Never On Her Feet” with lines like “She Likes to Call Herself a Little Woman” plays on the male point of view of wanting to capture the heart of someone who operates truly independent of your wants. In ways it sounds like a contemporary piece like a Maroon Five song albeit with stronger instrumentals and more complex depth. “One More Shot” is possibly the richest track in terms of a narrative with an arc following a character who feels unseen and uncared for “Nobody picked up the phone” and his desire to reconstruct what he once had. “Eyes closed again and there he goes”. The group has a real knack for creating catchy poppy hits, but hiding sometimes subtly and more times not the inherent darkness that appears in all of their work. Once again the structural choice to have an extended breather and showcase for the backing band is inspired and makes the whole group feel like they have equal footing.
The penultimate track, “Rule the World ”, a cover of the Tears for Fears classic actually has a wonderfully disorienting skipping record like drum opening. It doesn’t radically shift the song or present it in a new context, but it’s an intimate display that genuinely feels like you’re there with the band just hanging out and having a good time over some classic tunes. Album closer “Stranger” is their shocking ace in the hole. A walloping epic of grand emotional proportion, it combines every element seen previously and tells a deeply introspective tale of rebuilding yourself, (“I’m scared of myself”) and the song even offers no easy ending, instead opting for an extended instrumental exit. Some might argue that it feels like an incomplete ending, but to me that’s the beauty of it. Live Sessions is a classic in the making, and Foolish Deep is only getting started.
Chadwick Easton