Live: V : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Talk about miracles: live, once unremittingly serious purveyors of three-chord diatribes of spiritual longing, have finally lightened up. On the lilting confessional ballad "Call Me a Fool," vocalist Ed Kowalczyk shares what he learned on what was apparently a long search: "I can't believe I finally found the key, the door, the trick/It was all in my mind/Now I'm one with the fools of love." Happy to be counted among the fools, Kowalczyk doesn't lampoon enlightenment on this hard-grinding hip-hop-tinged album, his group's fifth effort. But he's far less haughty about holiness than he was circa Secret Samadhi in 1997. Now he peddles the enlightened life with tongue in cheek and makes fun of a rival with sexual double-entendres on "Deep Enough." Kowalczyk may have filtered some of the bluster from his lyrics, but he has wisely left the jagged edges in his music. Whether stomping through a mean rock grind ("Simple Creed") or evoking a more reflective mood (the Glen Ballard-produced "Forever May Not Be Long Enough"), Live don't hit you over the head as much, but they're still a band of true believers, more interested in rousing people awake than merely entertaining them.

TOM MOON
(RS 879 - October 11, 2001)