Absolutely. Some bands really shine live and are an utterly different experience to what they record. I was listening to some band a poster referenced here on kvr (in the hw forum) that I'd never heard of before. They linked a live clip and I hunted down a few others of them live and...superb, atmospheric, big developing synthy builds etc, absolutely loved it. Called M83 or M38 or something similar. So I went on a YT search for their tracks and TBH they were rubbish - mostly sounded like MOR guitary soft rock or equally horrible. Didn't even recognize them as the same band on their live stuff.Constructed Identity wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2026 7:43 pm If you’ve never seen them live you have no clue. Great concerts, albums are so so.
And Moby is classic right up to Everything is Wrong - I actually bought that album twice since I lost the case. I even had his signature on a poster once. Anyway neither have progressed since 20 years so they fade away.
So, yeah I can imagine Chemical Brothers being a bit more entertaining live. But their recorded stuff is very ho-hum. Same as Radiohead I'd imagine. I can see them being good live, but recorded stuff is extremely love'em or hate'em. To this day I completely fail to see what millions of others went gaga about on OK Computer - it's mostly noise to me
.Some bands just don't translate well to recording, or they free up and let loose when live, whichever it is?