Pre-Owned Awake: The Best Of Live (Includes DVD)

Selling The Drama, the fourth track on Live's recently released Awake: The Best Of Live, was the song that thrust the four-piece from Pennsylvania onto the world stage. The masterstroke (from their sophomore release Throwing Cooper) was the defining moment in the band's career, and helped set them apart from the rest of the alternative pack in the early 1990s. Singer Ed Kowalczyk smothered his literate lyrics in thick rock arrangements that echoed the sounds of the day, but managed to steer clear of the cheese factor that was so prevalent throughout the alternative boom.

The thundering "Operation Spirit (The Tyranny Of Tradition)," the somewhat confusing "Pain Lies On The Riverside," and the anti-racism cut "The Beauty Of Gray," taken from the group's debut album, show a band still discovering itself. "Selling The Drama," on the other hand, is the sound of a band coming into its own. With the exception of a few tracks, everything Live did afterward bordered on phenomenal. Awake contains all the highlights from the group's 13 year career. Songs like "The Dolphin's Cry," a number that finds Kowalczyk and co. springing between soft and heavy instrumentation, and "Overcome," a gracefully painted piano and cello track, are well thought out pieces that go beyond the typical 'party on dude' mentality of most rock music.

Kowalczyk's writing is scholarly and poetic at its best, simple entertainment at its worst, but never boring. On "I Alone," the singer dips into the eternal well of inspiration that is spiritualism (a favorite place of his, it seems) and nearly blows a lung in the delivery room as he births another crunching masterpiece. Guitarist Chad Taylor, bassist Patrick Dahlheimer and drummer Chad Gracey pound away madly behind Kowalczyk. "Lightning Crashes," one of the band's biggest hits, deals with the two most important moments in the circle of life: the beginning and the end. The song slowly builds to an emotional crescendo. "Heaven," from the band's last studio disc, 2003's Birds Of Pray, is a chunky cut that owes a debt musically to U2.

The 19 track disc includes the previously unreleased "We Deal In Dreams," a brooding and instrumentally maniacal track from the Throwing Copper sessions. Kowalczyk makes it clear he doesn't bury his head in the sand when it comes to world issues. A duet version of "Run Away," featuring genre-hopping vocalist Shelby Lynne, appears on CD here for the first time. Lynne and Kowalczyk are an odd match, but one that works extremely well. An unlikely cover of Johnny Cash's "I Walk The Line" ends the album. One imagines Cash, who in his later years found himself classed as an alternative artist, would have loved the band's spirited interpretation.

Awake: The Best Of Live is a great summation of the band's first five studio albums, and a good place to start if you're just discovering the group for the first time.