Madrugada
Live At Trafalmadore

THE REVIEW

The latest CD from Madrugada, The Deep End, is their best-selling success. It would have been foolish of them not to take advantage of Christmas and the great moment (they were even invited to play at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, and to attend, they had to cancel two sold-out German tour dates) to release a little project that’s as easygoing as it is profitable in the record shops.

Høyem and company are not foolish, of course, hence “Live at Trafalmadore,” mostly recorded on December 2 at the Spektrum in Oslo and already in (Norwegian) stores by the 14th of the same month.

Twelve tracks, including two covers ("Mother Of Earth" and "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child"), plus a bonus disc with four more tracks: this is the “limited edition” available here in Norway; it’s unknown if the international version, scheduled for February, will be any different.

What can be said: a live album, unless it contains some extraordinary participation or represents the recording of a particularly significant event, is usually not a high point in life. It’s nice to hear already known pieces played in a slightly different way, perhaps that is. Here, the “extraordinary” guests bringing new life to some Madrugada pieces are the slide guitar of Kid Congo Powers (former Gun Club), the strings of the Bodø Sinfonietta, and the voice of Ane Brun. The latter, a rather beloved Norwegian singer-songwriter, is in stores with an album of duets that includes “Lift Me,” sung with Madrugada: well, in the bonus disc of Live at Trafalmadore, you can listen to the same piece in “Single Version.”
Also on the bonus disc is the “Terror Mix” of Black Mambo: a version with Bauhaus-like reminiscences (reminds me of “Bela Lugosi is Dead”) of our successful piece that has already ended up in several soundtracks (we happened to hear it in two films).

Noteworthy, in our opinion, is the live version of “Majesty” (accompanied on violin by Lise Sørensen) and the fact that Madrugada has read the great Vonnegut. For the rest, indeed, not exactly a high point in life.