Live At Life

Ian McNabb's Live at Life is a pretty barebones affair -- just McNabb and his guitar recorded live at Liverpool's Life Café over two nights in December of 1999. It was originally released as a fan-club-only item in 2000 before being picked up for general release by Sanctuary/Castle a year later. However, Live at Life's origins as a fan-club item are still very evident in the track selection; certainly, many longtime fans would be pleased by McNabb's decision to forgo playing his best-known, most commercially successful songs, instead electing to troll through his and the Icicle Works' back catalog to offer up a selection of relative obscurities and underappreciated gems from virtually every stage of his career (going all the way back to the Icicle Works' first album for "Reaping the Rich Harvest"). Live at Life also bears the stamp of "fan club release" for a couple of other reasons: the already-converted fan base will be fine with the somewhat monochromatic tone of the album (always a danger with lengthy solo acoustic recordings) and the energy-draining decision to almost completely mix out the crowd reaction and applause will actually be preferred by McNabb acolytes who wanted to savor every note of his performance with a minimum of distractions. So as a fan-club release, Live at Life is a well-thought-out, well-produced niche product. However, for casual fans (or for people looking for their first introduction to Ian McNabb), Live at Life -- featuring no hits and lacking the raw energy one normally associates with a live release -- is probably the least-essential item in McNabb's catalog. Which is not to say that Live at Life is a bad album -- just a curious one to put into general release. ~ Rudyard Kennedy|