Therapy? – We’re Here To The End

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Ireland’s other musical export Therapy? have, remarkably, never released a live album in their 20-year recording career, so this set recorded over three sold-out nights at London’s tiny (TINY) Water Rats Theatre represents a career-spanning celebration. And career-spanning it is. The band have done a superb job of selecting tracks from all 12 of their studio recordings (2001′s Shameless has no tracks included), with no less than seven tracks taken from the two mini-albums which kicked off their career in 1991 (Babyteeth) and 1992 (Pleasure Death), over two discs and a total of 36 tracks. However, as strong as the song-selection is, and as tangible as the energy from those nights comes across in the recording, the overall quality of the recording is about as good as those first two rough, raw mini-albums. The vocals in particular sound detached from the rest of the music, and actually don’t do Andy Cairns any favours at all, making him sound far more like a punk singer than he has on any of their more polished material over the last 15 years or so. Most of this is probably down to the venue selection. The Water Rats Theatre is so small it’s practically impossible to get a good sound mix for any act other than an acoustic solo artist, and whenever anyone heavy plays there the vocals get buried and the snare drum echoes like it’s being played in a storage container. For their first ever live release, and something intended to mark their 20th anniversary, they really should have found a way to make a better recording than this. In 2010 this barely-better-than-bootleg quality is not good enough.

Written by Andy Lye
More: Hard Rock, Live Albums, Quick.Play Reviews, Therapy?