New York – While we like to remember shows as these great, loud, glorious events, live albums are often a disappointment. Even when they’re professionally recorded, there is usually an overly rambunctious crowd member or equipment failure that makes what felt perfect in the moment “off” when played back. Sometimes concerts are memories best left unfocused. Of course there are exceptions to this rule.
Matt Pryor’s Nine Forty Live is one of those exceptions. Best known as the lead man of The Get Up Kids, Pryor took to the stage as something of a solo act to record Nine Forty Live at a recent show in his native Kansas.
He brought with him a small army of an orchestra to play songs from his own albums, namely his second solo album, May Day. Pryor played “As If I Could Fall In Love With You Again,” “Polish the Broken Glass” and “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” from the record, which came out in 2012. The album is a softer sound that translated well to both a live setting and the orchestral accompaniment. Pryor was able to similarly strip back tracks from The New Amsterdams catalogue and retrofit them to that same setting.
He did not need to make too many changes. The tracks he incorporated, like “Strangled By The Thought” off The New Amsterdams’ 2006 album Killed or Cured, are simple enough in their original formats. There are noticeable changes between the original versions and the live ones, but nothing is unrecognizable or dramatically different. Most of the songs he picked were somewhat acoustic sounding to begin with. For that reason it made sense that The New Amsterdams’ 2007 record At the Foot of My Rival has such a huge presence on Nine Forty Live. The tracks “Without a Sound (Eleanor),” “Lost Long Shot,” “Hughes,” “Drunk or Dead” and “Blood on the Floor” were all on the setlist for the Nine Forty Live concert. In a way it was as much a The New Amsterdams show as it was a Matt Pryor one. The best tracks on Nine Forty Live, “Ex’s and Oh’s” was pulled from Outroduction, the 2013 album of The New Amsterdams’ B-sides.
Despite being pulled from different ends of Pryor’s career, this mix of songs formed a cohesive track listing. Pryor’s solo work doesn’t differ too dramatically from The New Amsterdams, so it makes sense that the two are compatible and in a live setting. Still the album is so well curated that listening to it, you wondering how it’s even possible.
Perhaps it’s the venue? The Lawrence Arts Theater provided the perfectly intimate setting and necessary acoustics. Perhaps it’s Pryor himself, playing as a seasoned musician who knows simply how to put on a good show. He talks, but not too much. His banter doesn’t sound rehearsed. When he sings, his voice transitions beautifully from the harsher “Kinda Go to Pieces” to the softness of “Hughes.” He sounds as good if not better as it did on The Get Up Kids’ Something to Write Home About. Perhaps after all the years, the different acts and bands, the planets finally aligned and Pryor found himself with the material, the experience and all the other elements needed to create such a beautiful recording.
Another part of what surely made the evening a success was the orchestral arrangements. Eric McCann, who doubles as the upright bassist for Pryor’s other outfit The New Amsterdams, arranged the strings and horn sections that crashed and swelled throughout the performance in perfect harmony with Pryor’s voice. No one instrument in the orchestra overwhelmed the others. Everything was just wonderfully balanced, but not so much so that it seemed unrealistic.
Perhaps this success is due to the fact that this live recording has been seven years in the making. The idea behind the album was given enough time to grow, come to fruition and thus be executed properly. Pryor and his gang of musicians were able to find the appropriate sound and setting that resulted in eleven songs that sounded almost studio-perfect. Well, not that perfect. There is that “live” quality, which lacks the polish of post-production, but still stands on its own.
Zoe Marquedant
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