Umphrey's McGee: Live at the Murat : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"Angular Momentum" is the name of a brief improvisation here: three minutes of guitarist Jake Cinninger and drummer Kris Myers ripping in supercharged tandem, like the White Stripes high on the first Van Halen album. That title is also an apt description of the exuberant interplay connecting the tangled rhythms and pop-wise songwriting all over this Chicago-based sextet's first official live album, taped over two nights in Indianapolis last April. Umphrey's McGee are a jam band in that they jam at length. But they surge with purpose, shuffling spontaneous and written passages in "In the Kitchen" and steadily ascending to a thundering-Pink Floyd resolution in "Higgins." And just as classic Grateful Dead concert records like Live Dead were carefully culled from great runs, Live at the Murat is a diligently constructed experience, combining songs and medleys from four sets into a two-CD suite of peaks that proves Umphrey's McGee always have destination on their minds, even when they fly free.