4 out of 5

Label: Hawthorne Street Records

Produced by: Aaron McCallister (recorded by)

Recorded / convened as an anniversary celebration for Floyds Brewing, this split live recording from 2011 gives each featured band a side to highlight tunes from their relevant releases – Young Widows mostly focusing on In and Out; Sweet Cobra mostly focusing on Mercy.

The recording is a little crackly and dim, but not in a way that overly undermines anything, especially given the mix by Kurt Ballou, which brings each band’s work in line with their albums’ sounds – bass heavy, with instruments ringing over the still discernible vocals.

My general ranking for live recordings is: what does it add to the studio experience? I’m not as familiar with Sweet Cobra, but in terms of the material itself, I can at least say that Young Widows mostly sticks to the script, and what I’ve sampled of Cobra – same. At the same time, the inherent rawness of the setup brings a punkier flavor to YW’s tighter sound, recalling their earlier work, and SC also get a bump in a similar fashion, giving their hardcore rock some jangle. The positive or negative effect of this is objective – for Widows, I think it mostly works against their balanced In and Out sound, but helps to highlight some nuance in the instrument interplay that the studio mixes don’t favor; for Cobra, I dig the way it livens up what sounds a bit too polished in the studio. Whatever read, the sound is different enough to justify a listen if you’re a fan, alongside the sequencing rearrangement of tracks which I always find interesting.

The other criteria comes as a new listener: is this a good representation of the band? If I followed from here to an album, would I be dissatisfied? …And I think it’s easy enough to extrapolate from my comments above that both acts are good lead-ins to other material, so if you came in as a fan of one band or the other, you wouldn’t be upset by deciding to track down further recordings of the opposite. (Y’know in a world where we’re paying for our music – right?)