Dredg – Live At The Fillmore

When I first heard Dredg a little over a year ago when they released Catch Without Arms I was blown away. I had no idea what to expect when I saw the disc, but I was amazed. Then, a few months later then came to town, sadly it was with the Taste Of Chaos tour; and in all honesty, they were by far the best band of the night. The crowd wasn’t fully into it, but the people who knew them loved them. Now, fast forward a few more months and the band just captured their powerful sound in the live setting and released it to their fans; and so, we are left with Live At The Fillmore, a nineteen track live album from the insanely talented Dredg.

The most important aspect of Live At The Fillmore is the unparallel sound quality. The band sounds amazing, it’s a simple as that. They are successfully able to transport that spacey, atmospheric pop into the live setting, making the listener sail away and get completely engulfed by the band’s music. Like their studio albums, Dredg are able to pull the listener in with the soaring harmonies and breathtaking melodies. Really, the album sounds so good you often forget that it is actually a live album. The only thing that pulls you back into reality is that fact that at times the vocals aren’t as strong as they are in the studio (but those times are few and far between) and then the occasional crowd cheer that they throw in.

While it sounds spectacular, that also takes away from some of the charm of a live album. There is absolutely no banter, other than “hi” and “bye”. Instead, they just play the songs one after another and soften the crowd. In fact, the crowd is pretty much nonexistent during most of the album. They seem to only pull up the crowd in the mix when the music calms down and makes a transitions from track to track. It seems to be used solely to remind you that it is a live cd, because without that you would forget that it is live and instead think of it more as a “best-of” sort of album; which is an accurate description as well as the band does play all their fan favorites.

Personally, the only thing that could make this album more complete would’ve been with the inclusion of Matroska. While yes, they tease us with a glimpse of a slightly recreated version of The Ornament(which is spectacular to hear), I would have loved to hear them lead into that with the soaring Matroska because to me, that song is unmatched.

If you’ve never heard of Dredg, this will be a nice introduction to them as they sound great and play their best songs but in reality, if you’ve never heard of them a live CD won’t be the first CD you buy from them. For Dredg fans though, this is a nice “best-of” collection. It doesn’t have that live charm that most live albums carry, but it’s a solid collection of tracks and it’s nice to hear the songs slightly re-worked too.