\u201cShe\u2019s lost her edge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes I wonder why I bother writing reviews at all. Mostly this happens when I\u2019m listening to (and\/or watching) a musical performance and carefully formulating in my head a set of observations while in the presence of my dear wife Karen. At some point in my ruminations I\u2019ll turn to her and ask what she thinks, which is her cue to sum up every nuanced impression I\u2019ve been formulating in my head with a single sharp, pithy phrase.<\/p>\n
This review will in fact consist of more than Karen\u2019s above four-word commentary, but there\u2019s no denying that, as a summation of Sheryl Crow\u2019s new double-CD-plus-DVD set Live At The Capitol Theatre<\/i>, it\u2019s pretty much on the nose. <\/p>\n
Crow is by now a veteran performer, a fact she alludes to more than once in the between-song banter heard here. Beginning with her 1993 debut Tuesday Night Music Club<\/i>, she\u2019s delivered 10 studio albums, dozens of singles, and thousands of live dates. This 21-song two-hour-plus set features her six-person touring band, a strong ensemble that allows her to recreate most of her studio oeuvre with great accuracy, which is both a blessing and somewhat of a curse. With few exceptions, she holds tight to the familiar here, playing the hits faithfully and sticking to her script, taking no risks and delivering a show that\u2019s well-structured and professional but at times rather listless.<\/p>\n
This is an especially odd outcome considering she opens with two of her more powerful tunes, the expansive \u201cEveryday Is A Winding Road\u201d and the punchy, acerbic \u201cA Change Would Do You Good.\u201d Both are performed skillfully, and between the CDs and the DVD you hear and see little bits of vamping and audience interaction, but every moment and every move feels carefully scripted and staged, devoid of spontaneity or anything resembling edge. The album these two cuts are taken from, Crow\u2019s self-titled 1996 sophomore disc<\/a>, is a fiery statement that veers from anger to despair and back again. That volatility is nowhere to be found here.<\/p>\n The rest of the set mixes solid newer material from 2017\u2019s Be Myself<\/i> (upbeat, rather poppy singles \u201cBe Myself\u201d and \u201cHalfway There,\u201d plus \u201cLong Way Back Home,\u201d \u201cRoller Skate\u201d and \u201cHeartbeat Away\u201d) with familiar tunes from several of the intervening albums (\u201cMy Favorite Mistake,\u201d \u201cThere Goes The Neighborhood,\u201d \u201cBest Of Times,\u201d \u201cSoak Up The Sun\u201d) and strong representation from her 1993 debut (\u201cRun Baby Run,\u201d \u201cCan\u2019t Cry Anymore,\u201d \u201cLeaving Las Vegas,\u201d \u201cStrong Enough,\u201d \u201cI Shall Believe,\u201d and, of course, \u201cAll I Wanna Do\u201d). Crow also covers \u201cThe First Cut Is The Deepest\u201d (Cat Stevens \/ Rod Stewart) and \u201cMidnight Rider\u201d (the Allman Brothers). Most of these cuts feel like they’re performed with more professionalism than enthusiasm, with many\u2014particularly the older ones\u2014feeling somewhat over-rehearsed and undercooked. (It\u2019s worth noting that this was the last show on a lengthy tour, which could have played a role there.)<\/p>\n As for the DVD, the production team has done its job well, shooting the show with 16 cameras that capture each moment from a variety of angles and interspersing the concert action with backstage interview segments with Crow. The problem is not production values or editing, but rather that the performances themselves feel rote and bland. In the interview Crow enthuses about the history of the venue and her hope to capture some of the \u201cgood juju\u201d left behind by performers like the Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton and the Allman Brothers, but there\u2019s not much evidence of that actually happening.<\/p>\n Instead what you get is a well-performed set that lacks any element of surprise or risk; it\u2019s an eminently safe Sheryl Crow By The Numbers show from start to finish, highly competent and oddly passionless. As a fan, I\u2019m quite fond of many of these songs, but so far I\u2019m stumped for a reason why I\u2019d want to hear this particular presentation of them again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":33694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5966],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-45515","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sheryl-crow","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45515"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}