(Translated from my original Italian text by Gemini and Piero Scaruffi)

Formed in Pennsylvania (York) at the beginning of the 1980s (when they were about twelve years old), the Live of Ed Kowalczyk (vocals) and Chad Taylor (guitar) represent pompous arena rock with positive values in the same vein as U2. Mental Jewelry (Radioactive, 1991). Songs like Pain Lies On The Riverside rely on the lyrics and Kowalczyk's singing.

The track Operation Spirit leaped into the charts, but another three years had to pass before Throwing Copper (Radioactive, 1994) consecrated them in the Olympus. By eliminating the spiritual and emotional excesses of the first album, the group found its own voice.
From the fusion of the melodic singer-songwriter style, progressive-rock, and the neo-folkrock of REM, superb songs are born like Selling The Drama (their greatest success, with a hint of You Were On My Mind by the We Five), Lightning Crash (a slow crescendo with a bit of Bruce Springsteen's passion), and Shit Towne (an autobiographical description of the frustration of small-town kids), overflowing with pathos and energy. Far from the excesses of heavy metal and grunge, despite a Meat Loaf-style rock and roll like Stage, the group excels if anything in the rugged ballad, as reinvented by Soul Asylum and Pearl Jam (I Alone and Waitress above all). With a singer who fuses the personality of Vedder (Pearl Jam) and the register of Stipe (REM), a guitarist who has learned the tricks of The Edge (U2), and a spectacular bassist like Pat Dahlheimer, an emulator of John Entwistle (Who), the group can afford more articulate solutions than average. Exemplary is the way they explode the muezzin-blues of The Dam At Otter Creek (filtered voice and distorted guitar chords), or the classical way they arrange the melody of All Over You until it becomes almost a madrigal, or the way they marry the epic accents of Jefferson Airplane to those of REM for the cryptic prayer of Pillar Of Davidson.
The lyrics shun the easy clich�s of romantic relationships or social criticism to face agonizing internal crises, and thus feed the legend. "When all that's left to do/ is reflect on what's been done."

The "multi-platinum" success of the album psychologically blocked the group for a few years. Secret Samadhi (Radioactive, 1997) leaves much to be desired, both on the commercial and artistic fronts. The group seems to have run out of ideas. Almost all the songs rely on complex dynamics to make up for the lack of good melodies. All the emphasis is on... emphasis. Rattlesnake and many others leverage the pairing of passionate singing and solemn sound. Conscious of their own insignificance, the boys retreat into embarrassing exaggerations, such as the excessively melodramatic and symphonic sound of Lakini's Juice and Heropsychodreamer. However high-sounding, the sound never manages to engage.

The crisis worsens on The Distance To Here (Radioactive, 2000), a collection of lame, tepid ballads, from the vibrant howl of Dolphin's Cry to the melodic grandeur of They Stood Up For Love. Run To The Water is a more operatic version of Lightning Crash. The hard-rocking tracks (e.g., Sun) sound terribly stereotyped. The rest is filler. No doubt Ed Kowalczyk is a powerful and sensitive singer, but behind his voice there is no music.

V (Universal, 2002) increases the doses of ballads and hip-hop, and Birds of Pray (Radioactive, 2003) and Songs For Black Mountain (2006) could have been made on a computer assembling Live cliches.