Tuesday, 26 November 2013

King Crimson: Absent Lovers; Live in Montreal 1984

Absent Lovers

Best song: Indiscipline

Worst song: Sartori in Tangier

Overall grade: 6

Prog live albums are hit and miss. Some bands, like Jethro Tull and ELP, made great ones, while other bands like Genesis and Rush didn’t really add anything to their studio versions. King Crimson, similarly, also made hit and miss live albums. Under ‘miss’, see early release Earthbound as well as ThraKattaK. Under ‘hit’, see this one.
The approach Fripp and company took with this release was not to try to tick off material from all stages of their career, and to focus heavily on the New Wave style material that had characterised their three 80s albums, although there were a couple of interludes to play a song each from ‘Lark’s Tongues’ and ‘Red’. This decision gave the concert a more uninterrupted, cohesive feel, so that it’s very clear that you’re listening to the same band all the way through.
Things are brilliant right from the perfectly-timed, gradual build-up of ‘Entry of the Crims’. Robert Fripp must have spent years and years getting this one right. It was worth it, though; he creeps me out no end on this, the kind of creepy that means you can’t quite tear yourself away. It mostly serves as a very extended build up (read: longer than the song itself) to ‘Lark’s Tongues in Aspic, Part III’ as well as mentally preparing the audience for the onslaught to come.
And when it does, it’s fantastic. ‘Lark’s Tongues’ just blows the original out of the water, and it was already the best song on Three. It’s a lightning-fast instrumental that takes all kinds of side bends and U-turns such that you can never quite keep up with it, and any audience member who wasn’t already fully engrossed would have been forced to sit up and pay attention. ‘Lark’s II’ also has its place on Disc 2 of the record, although personally I would have liked to hear the two songs played back to back, to hear the callbacks between the two juxtaposed against the very different musical styles. Still, both are individually fascinating too.
The other song from the 70s days, ‘Red’, doesn’t stick out as much as it should. Adrian Belew and Tony Levin adding their own twists to the song bring it more up to date with the newer stuff, and the less studio-precise live setting makes the recent material feel more classic, and all in all ‘Red’ blends in pretty well. If ‘Starless’ had been included, I probably would have written it off as something too sacred to be messed with, but although I love the original ‘Red’ I actually equally appreciate this new version, although I still can’t see it as the definitive version of the song.
 The other two 80s albums of King Crimson, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair, are distinctively average. Very listenable, but without the idiosyncrasies that made Discipline such a success. And yet put in this live context, a lot of them shine just as much as that favourite of mine does. In fact, it makes picking a best song incredibly hard, since there’s the difficulty of whether to pick, say, ‘Indiscipline which was an already amazing song made even better, or something like ‘Industry’ which so wildly improves on its studio version that it takes on a whole other life.
 Interestingly enough, there are no true improvisations here (just extended sections to some songs), which are certainly what Crimson were famous for earlier in their career. I wonder, if I went to a King Crimson show and everything was drawn from pre-written material, would I be disappointed? When the songs are as good as this, it’s hard to say, but I do think that the spontaneous music creation is a big part of the band, and hearing the members play off each other live would definitely be interesting, although as this show was only recorded on one night it would be quite a risk.
I wasn’t a massive fan of ‘Dig Me’ on Three; I see it as a failed experiment, but here, coming in the middle of a section Belew describes as “the weird stuff”, it no longer seems like experimenting for experimenting’s sake and is actually engaging. There’s other good stuff from the same album too: ‘Sleepless’ is literally ruled by Bruford who delivers a stunningly powerful performance, and (as already mentioned) ‘Industry’ which showed serious potential in the studio but only fully comes into its own in the more fleshed-out and atmospheric version we see here.
‘Beat’ is the least represented of the three 80s albums, and while I really enjoy the extended interpretation of ‘Waiting Man’ where all the band members play excellently, my favourite part of ‘Sartori in Tangier’ is the bit where Belew asks the audience if they know any good jokes. Truth be told, nobody plays any worse on this song than anywhere else, but it feels like it was thrown in just to get more representation for the album, and so it feels unnecessary and with so many other good instrumentals on the album, its comparative weaknesses definitely show. Then, lastly, there’s ‘Heartbeat’ which is well placed in the encore for being one of the most conventionally song-orientated and – dare I say it – catchy KC songs ever.
As far as ‘Discipline’ itself goes, its contributions aren’t massively altered – because they don’t need to be - but are just played with more energy, emotion and unpredictability. Doing these detailed songs on a live album requires impeccable production, which is achieved perfectly, especially sticking out on your ‘Indiscipline’ and your ‘Matte Kudasai’.
Overall, I’d have to pick ‘Indiscipline’ as my overall favourite song, simply because I never thought it could be improved upon and yet they still managed. My expectations were so high before hearing it for the first time, but the band exceeded them with their precision playing and involvement in their chillingly slowed-down performance. Yet ‘Thela Hun Ginjeet’ also proves a highlight as Levin takes it and runs with it all over the place, Belew following close behind. And the intense and fast-paced ‘Elephant Talk’ is a perfect grand finale to what must have been a spectacular live show to attend. I can only hope that when the band start playing live again next year, they’re even half as good as this.

All in all, a truly great live album, and one that makes ‘Beat’ and ‘Three of a Perfect Pair’ wholly unnecessary, as you can find everything you need here. It shows no signs of the band getting tired, even though it was the last concert they would play for ten years. Still, I guess it’s not that surprising… after all, Fripp already had experience with going out on a high note.

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