Search - Four Guitars :: Four Guitars Live

Not a Noise pinnacle

Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 06/12/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Nels Cline, and Carlos Giffoni recorded on 8/8/01, in a performance that does indeed have its moments.



Completely unlike Nels' Downpour release in tone and scope, Four Guitars Live is more of a clanging, metallicly electronic sort of an album. While it definitely falls into a Noise Sculpture area, the idea that this sort of thing takes no skill is wrong. There are all sorts of angles from which music can be approached. If you're wanting Wes Montgomery, no, this won't do it for you. Still, while yes anyone can stand in the right place and "get feedback", that's quite different from shaping it into the sort of mindblowing alien communion of which the Grateful Dead were capable early on.



This cd has its ups and downs. There's one stretch that'd be fantastic as the music coming from the truck of an emotionally unstable ice cream man on a hot summer day. Then there are some stretches that are just linear, fuzzy and obvious. There's a passage where Nels and Thurston are sculpting some cool terrain, but either Lee or the Carlos (I don't know Lee's playing all that well anymore as it's been years since I've heard Sonic Youth, and I'd never heard Carlos at all) are just chopping along with it in a really bland, mundane way.



There are definitely cool passages during this, where the music sorta folds inward and feeds on itself like a sonic blackhole, but if you're really looking to stick to the essentials, I have to say that Nels and Thurston - In-Store (recorded 12/30/96) blows this away. It's also better in terms of the sonic quality of the recording itself. Zeena Parkins, Nels Cline and Thurston Moore - Live at Easthampton Town Hall (1/25/01) is also worlds beyond this, musically/imaginatively, though the fidelity is lower. That same trio on 1/27/01 is also fantastic, and a great recording. You get detailed, twisted, aural pictures that melt in and out of your mind.



On Four Guitars Live, the combo platter of so-so and very good moments work against each other to give us an album that is "good" overall, but will not lower the stature of any of Nels or Thurston's previous, great work together. While I really dig maybe 55% of this, I think maybe it didn't need to be 4 guitars live. The Nels & Thurston duo connect better and go farther than does this quartet ... as does the Zeena, Nels & Thurston trio of utter mind-warp.



If you're mainly reading this review because Nels is on this album, but you don't already have his newer album, Downpour and you can only afford to get 1, go buy that. That has an all-timer performance by the trio of Nels, Andrea Parkins and Tom Rainey. The In-Store album I mentioned earlier isn't available here, but you can find it at Forced Exposure or the Downtown Music Gallery."