After Daybreak: What A Wonderful World (2010/UQCD Gold CD/Intermusic/Top Music)/The Raconteurs: Live At Montreux 2008
(Eagle Blu-ray)/Return To Forever: The
Mothership Returns (2012/Eagle DVD/2-CD Set)
Picture:
X/B-/C+ Sound: B/B-/B- & B Extras: D/C-/B- Music Programs: C/B-/B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The After Daybreak Gold Compact Disc is
only available from our friends at Top Music International, has a Compact Disc
layer that will play on virtually all CD players and can be ordered at the link
below.
Now for
more recent music releases.
After Daybreak: What A Wonderful
World (2010) has
the singing trio tackling 11 songs including standards like the classic of the
title, Dan Folgelberg’s Longer, Ennio
Morricone’s Nella Fantasia, Over The Rainbow (yes, from Wizard Of Oz) and other songs with
nice, smooth vocals, yet I was not overall very impressed with the performances
despite the fact that the gentlemen can sing.
This is just too lite, too laid back and even too flat. I wanted these guys to get fired up, but
instead, I just got a bit drowsy. This
might be your kind of music, but if it is not, you’ll want to pass.
Jack
White may have separated The White Stripes, but he has his solo work and two
other bands to play in. The Raconteurs: Live At Montreux 2008
is a fine, strong performance of a really great Rock Band (one of the few of
its kind or its generation) in a 100 minutes performance that I wish was a
little longer and had less sound issues, but White, Jack Lawrence, Patrick
Keller and co-lead singer Brendan Benson can really deliver and why they are
not more famous or successful as a band is a real mystery. Are they too smart? Too intense?
Too powerful? Too
intelligent? Too challenging? Likely all of those.
I had
hardly heard any of these songs before and several should have been big
singles, but that exclusivity likely is appealing to their fans. They perform 16 of their songs from their two
albums Broken Boy Soldier (2006) and
Consolers Of The Lonely (2008, for
which they are touring here to support) and this is a great introduction to the
band and even White if you have somehow missed his White Stripes hits (or his
poor James Bond theme Another Way To Die
from Quantum Of Solace, an extremely
rare miss for the man), but this is worth going out of your way for despite my
minor reservations. A paper pullout with
an essay is the only extra. Hope they
make another album!
Finally
we have Return To Forever: The
Mothership Returns (2012), a follow-up to the impressive Blu-ray that also
happens to be Live At Montreux 2008
like The Raconteurs effort above, which you can read more about here:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8561/Return+To+Forever+Returns+%E2%80
Wonder if
they played the same day? The same
stage? Stanley Clarke, Lenny White and Chick
Corea reunite, but Jean-Luc Ponty and Frank Gambale fill in (more or less) for
Al Di Meola in this unusual 2-CD set offering nine songs so long, you’d think
they were trying to be a Progressive Rock band like Yes or Emerson, Lake &
Palmer. This is an impressive show,
though I wish it had a Blu-ray. The
bonus DVD only has two music performances and adds two documentaries on the
band in their current version. But they have talent to spare and that makes
this a nice set. An informative booklet
with tech information, illustrations and essays are the other extra. I recommend this set, but would start with
the older Blu-ray release first.
The 1080i
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Raconteurs
is clean and colorful, but has some noise and detail issues typical of such a
shoot, yet looks better than the softer anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on
the Forever DVD, which has poorer,
softer documentary footage as well.
The PCM
2.0 16/44.1 Stereo sound on Daybreak is
from the UQCD Gold CD series by Intermusic and does sound as good as anything
here. A well recorded work, I have no
complains sonically. The DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Raconteurs
is just a tiny bit towards the front speakers, confirmed by the lossy Dolby
Digital 5.1 mix version, which happens to be very compressed and weak. The PCM 2.0 Stereo version here is also not
as good as the DTS, but far better than the Dolby, yet all confirm two things:
this is a very loud concert (one of the loudest we have ever encountered on
Blu-ray or DVD) and the final mix has a little bit of a distorted edge that
holds performance back a bit.
The PCM
2.0 16/44.1 Stereo sound on Forever
is the other sonic winner here, sounding better than the lossy Dolby Digital
5.1 mix version on the concert footage included on the DVD.
To find
out more about ordering the After
Daybreak CD, the direct order link is as follows when it posts on their site:
http://www.topmusic.com/to-order.htm
- Nicholas Sheffo