With a number of tracks recorded in "Janie Nowell's sewing room" or at "Miles's house" among other less than prime locations, Acoustic is lo-fi in a way that would make Guided By Voices or Sebadoh proud. Except that where those bands have the luxury of deciding whether or not to bypass the recording studio and record at home, Sublime have released this album as a farewell of sorts since their singer Bradley Nowell has left the building.
These quiet, reflective recordings are playful and relaxed. The live cuts are as unvarnished as that Beatles live album from Hamburg, Germany in 1962. The audience talks louder on these recordings as well. If you need to collect every last scrap the band ever recorded, if you consider actual record production anathema to the "punk" ethic, if your mom doesn't like you, then this collection will go a great way towards altering the rest of your life.
Every time I listen to Oasis, I have a hard time getting the image of the Bros. Gallagher drunkenly beating the living clay out of each other on Celebrity Death Match out of my mind. Yep, these boys are wankers, tosspots, and living, puking proof that being a Rock Star is a backdated, stupid, and useless idea, but they still manage to generally operate on an accomplished enough level that even collections of B-side detritus like this one may be classified without reservation as pretty damn fine. O.K., so thereΓÇÖs nothing quite in the "Live Forever" pantheon here (one of the best songs of the last decade, that), but meaty 'toons like "Acquiesce," "Going Nowhere," "Half The World Away," and "Stay Young" deliver the anthemic goods. Even slop like the soundcheck jam "The Swamp Song" and that perennial encore "I Am The Walrus" skates by dint of sheer musculature. Sure, Liam and Noel are arrogant slobs and thieves to boot, but they steal from the best, and they know the road to Rockville.
Every time I listen to Oasis, I have a hard time getting the image of the Bros. Gallagher drunkenly beating the living clay out of each other on Celebrity Death Match out of my mind. Yep, these boys are wankers, tosspots, and living, puking proof that being a Rock Star is a backdated, stupid, and useless idea, but they still manage to generally operate on an accomplished enough level that even collections of B-side detritus like this one may be classified without reservation as pretty damn fine. O.K., so thereΓÇÖs nothing quite in the "Live Forever" pantheon here (one of the best songs of the last decade, that), but meaty 'toons like "Acquiesce," "Going Nowhere," "Half The World Away," and "Stay Young" deliver the anthemic goods. Even slop like the soundcheck jam "The Swamp Song" and that perennial encore "I Am The Walrus" skates by dint of sheer musculature. Sure, Liam and Noel are arrogant slobs and thieves to boot, but they steal from the best, and they know the road to Rockville.
