LIVE IN AMERICA

Live in America is the first live album from Transatlantic. Transatlantic is a kind of prog supergroup which consist of Mike Portnoy / drums, vocals ( Dream Theater, OSI), Neil Morse / vocals, keyboards ( Spock´s Beard and solo), Roine Stolt / vocals, guitars ( The Flower Kings, Kaipa, The Tangent, Karmakhanic and solo), Pete Trewavas / bass, vocals ( Marillion). The debut album from Transatlantic called SmPtE was a really excellent album IMO even though it was very obvious who had written what for the album. Most material was written by Neal Morse and some was written by Roine Stolt. As I like both Spock´s Beard and The Flower Kings that wasn´t a problem for me though. Live in America is a 2 CD set.

The music on Live in America is mostly taken from the debut album and we´re even presented with the 30 minute epic All of the Above. The only song from the debut that is missing from Live in America is the Procol Harum cover In held ('twas) in I. Besides the obvious choices of songs from the debut album there are also a couple of Beatles covers in a medley called Mystery train / Magical mystery tour / Strawberry fields forever. Magical Mystery Tour is only played briefly while Strawberry Fields Forever is given the full treatment. We also hear the Norwegian Wood motif played between the two Beatles songs. CD2 starts with a Genesis medley. We get the first couple of minutes from Watcher of the Skies and then most of Firth of Fifth. The album ends with a medley with parts from a song from each of the members main bands and a cover of The Beatles She´s So Heavy.

The musicianship is excellent and even though it says in the booklet that this recording is from their sixth show together as a band there are surprisingly few errors. The vocal performances are pretty good too. But what I enjoy the most is that Mike Portnoy restrains himself and plays some really enjoyable drum parts. His performances on most Dream Theater live albums are always way too complex and most of the time destroys the mood in Dream Theater´s songs IMO ( this only counts for their live albums of course.

The production is good but not excellent IMO. I don´t believe they corrected many errors afterwards and that´s always a positive sign on a live recording.

Live in America is a good live album, but it never reaches excellent in my book. The performance is good and the song selection is great, but the overall impresssion is still that this album isn´t very essential. 3 stars is deserved for a good but generally average live album.