Number 10 of 2006 — Lunik: Life is on Our Side

Live albums are usually the preserve of three groups of musicians: Taking the first two: there are those who feel a need to close a stage of their career and there are those who use it as a tool to reinvigorate a career, or to make some money. The third and final group splits into two subgroups, both use this mechanism as a way of distinguishing the live experience from the studio. One subgroup uses it to solely express the live experience (e.g. Underworld’s tremendous Everything Everything CD and DVD), the other subgroup uses it to express their musical prowess, i.e. that they’re real musicians. For example, the set of Tori Amos’ The Original Bootlegs – 6 double CDs covering the 2005 Original Sinsuality tour, belongs here (and those who were bemused by the rationale for releasing six live albums fails to understand the meaning of the word ‘live’ in this context, and indeed Tori as an artist).

Swiss band Lunik, released Life is on Our Side in 2004. It is, barring one studio recording, a live album, taken from the tour to support Weather. Lunik’s third album, released in 2003, marked their departure from the electronica of Rumour and Ahead, becoming more acoustic. It was therefore a natural consequence to record and release a live album. And it too lives in this last group. You might assume that bands that produce pop music don’t do live very well. Life is on Our Side successfully disputes this assumption and as a result, leaves the listener with a better understanding of Lunik as a band and as individuals. It is an album which exposes their potential to become as astounding as The Cardigans.

The essential factor in a live performance is to avoid replicating what’s previously been recorded. Life is on Our Side embraces this fundamentally, and allows them to gently experiment with the arrangement and delivery of each song. Unfortunately, as a result, it shows up the deficiencies in opening track and single Summer’s Gone. The studio recording simply lacks the emotional impact and intimacy of the rest of the album. The lead up to the chorus and the chorus is fine, but this pop instinct shaves away the humanity leaving something best left to supermarkets. Even playing the melancholy card doesn’t work here because it’s too plodding.

Not that I’m totally adverse to strummed guitars: New Day is the first live track. The first verse is just Jaël’s voice and a guitar. Her vocals are now more forward and are beautifully recorded. But it’s not until the second verse, when the rest of the band come in that this live experience turns into something more precious. This is, essentially, the best forum for their music. And it’s staggering. There’s no need for intricate production or backing vocals. Just letting the songs live through the performance is enough. The other guys, Luk Zimmermann (lead guitar), Cédric Saurer (keyboards), Jacob Suske (bass) and Mats Marti on drums all perform excellently. Jaël supports with rhythm guitar.

So what about the scary swing time of Size? Well, it works, but perhaps it appears too early on the album. Are we quite ready for an improvised piano break and brushed drums? Maybe not. But it does mark Lunik up as a collective of professional musicians who aren’t afraid to experiment. Another minor stylistic switch occurs later on in What You Are, just with the way a guitar line is played, separating the verse and chorus. It underpins the verse, but then sits back during the chorus. Oh, and there’s an improvised break too.

A recorded live album, lives and dies by its performance. It’s too easy to fall into presenting each song in a similar way, and in this instance the songs are not enough. The challenge is to be different. The demonstration of Lunik’s live capabilities build from the third track, Size, because Weather is almost as anthemic as it can get. It helps having a singer who can truly sing live, and boy, Jaël’s absolutely amazing throughout the album.

But you do need songs. The performance isn’t everything. In the studio you can cosset a weak song in paraphernalia, you can drench a bad vocal performance in effects. You can’t do much live, apart from the general fix of adding reverb. If anything, Life is on Our Side shows that Lunik’s songs are better without this trickery. The subtle keyboard pad on Slide, and the emphasised guitar line underlines the emotion of the track.

After the quiet thankful reflection of Backup, comes the bouncy jazz of Lie, which betrays the sadness of the song “And it’s a lie that I don’t need / Your company anymore / But I will not bleed / Even though it hurts”. This time, it’s the piano’s turn to fiddle around in the break. Democracy in action, huh?

Through Your Eyes is an immense song in any setting. The prolonged intro serves to tease, because it is their best song. Jaël’s vocals take a turn for the more broken and fragile, and the instrumental backing become more subtle. “I don’t deserve you, it’s so hard to believe that you are really in love with me.” As with any traditional live album, this is a time when the audience comes into play, because we get the inevitable crowd chorus. But as a musical device – it’s a double break – it works marvellously. It’s exactly what the song needs. A connection between audience and band, taking an alternate meaning of the song. Rightly, it marks the end of the main act.

The song played as an encore is the short and sweet Other Side, and the album closes with new song Serenity performed in a live setting, but curiously without an audience. The latter has obvious acoustic differences from the rest of the album, so it could be a live recording with post-production overdubs – the backing vocals are clues to this.

Every time I listen to this album, my opinion of it grows – it’s emotionally and musically rewarding. If you love music you really should have this album in your collection.

[Life is on Our Side – iTunes UK]