This live album recorded in New York before Christmas in 2007 captures Jesse in the environment where his music comes into its own. Having seen Jesse on many occasions myself I can testify to the fact that he puts on a great live show; therefore, the release of his first ‘official’ live album (there was a live bootleg sold on one of his previous tours) allows fans to recapture some of those experiences, while providing the new fan with an introduction that will leave them cursing the fact that they hadn’t heard him sooner.
If you’re not aware of Jesse Malins music already he’s a New York singer songwriter, previously of punk band D-Generation. His gravely voice and storytelling song style has made for some great albums with his debut ‘The Fine Art of Self Destruction’ probably being the best.
The live recording here contains mainly acoustic and alternative versions of some of his best known songs. There’s a good mix of tracks from all of Jesse’s three studio albums here and the quality of the recording is fantastic. There are two bonuses here for fans as well, the first being that both ‘Cigarettes and Violets’ and a cover of Neil Young’s ‘Helpless’ are on the album. The former track was not on the first UK release of Jesse’s debut and is probably one of his best songs and the latter was played regularly live for a period but was not on the track list of the covers album ‘On Your Sleeve’.
The second bonus is that UK fans get 5 previously unreleased studio tracks. All of these are decent songs, the best being ‘Megan Don’t Know’, an all out rocker. None of the bonus tracks point in a new direction for Jesse, which is a good thing, why would you want something so good to change. The last of the five bonus tracks is a cover of ‘The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ and it’s a good stab at a much covered song. As with most of Jesse’s covers he makes it his own and that’s most of the challenge.
So if you’re already a fan of Jesse this is a must buy because you get everything that’s great about his live show on a CD plus the bonus studio tracks. If you’re new to Jesse then I’d probably recommend buying the studio albums first but when you inevitably love his music, you’ll end up seeing him and all this will eventually lead to you buying this album anyway.