ROOM TEMPERATURE LIVE

Now, I usually enjoy Peter Hammill's music immensely, and have quite a few of his records and CDs, but even a fan such as I must admit, this one is an experiment gone wrong. Perhaps in smaller doses, the idea of PH with only his voice, keyboards and guitar, only assisted by a violinist and electric bassist, might be easier to take. But here, at about two and a half hours, Hammill's gruff, over-emotive voice, without a full band to back him up, often wind up sounding like someone doing weird interpretations of well-lyriced show tunes. And it begins rather badly. It takes Hammill a few songs before he stops hitting frequent off-key notes, and bassist Nic Potter begins the set rather sloppily, and only get marginally better throughout.

This isn't to say the set is without value. There are many sections where the trio clicks together, but given the length of the disks, they are few and far between. And violinist Stuart Gordon plays some mean licks, but often falls into performing the same tricks in multiple songs.

Nice try, Peter, but none of the recordings of the songs on this double disk set are superior to the original full band recordings. The songs are nice to own individually, but the album as a whole is too hard to listen to.

2.5 stars