Thomas Dolby issued this live recording, made at Martyrs in Chicago, Illinois in May of 2006, just as there were some stirrings of a revival of interest in his work; ironically, EMI would re-release his
Golden Age of Wireless album in all of its permutations, augmented with his early-'80s concert
Live Wireless as a DVD, just a couple of years later. But this 21st century presentation of
Dolby's work is not to be ignored. Vocally, the man has not only seemingly failed to age a day, but he has become more expressive with age, so that end of the performance is spot-on for anyone with fond memories of pieces such as "Flying North," "One of Our Submarines," "Europa and the Pirate Twins," or "She Blinded Me With Science," all represented here. There isn't a lot of live ambience in terms of audience response or interaction, but the audio is excellent and the performance ultimately bracing and thoroughly satisfying; the tempos are sometimes pulled back a bit, but the instrumentation is more complex and involved, and rewarding. And "The Flat Earth" is so finely sung and played as to be one of the finest things that
Dolby has ever done, at any time in his career, and worth the price of the disc by itself. Indeed, if you're splitting philosophical and aesthetic hairs, this release could easily qualify as a live "best-of" for the man's work, while the EMI versions just as easily come off as works-in-progress.