Live In Dakota Captures The Stereophonics At Their Best

Since their early days in Cwmaman, South Wales as a cover band called Tragic Love Company, The Stereophonics have carved out a comfortable career by consistently climbing up in front of audiences and blowing them away.

Live In Dakota is a double-disc anthology that captures performances recorded during the final six months of the tour in support of the Language, Sex, Violence, Other? tour. That album allows you to hear their new vitality, which can be partially credited to new drummer Javier Weyler helping redefine the band and re-establish their passion. For frontman Kelly Jones, it happened at a perfect time.

"It was a great year to capture a band at a really good place in a live form," he says. "Last year was the first time we've been able to play all the back catalogue of music, like, five albums.

"Each album has a slightly different slant, style of music, attitude and energy. And for some reason, playing those songs live last year, they all kind of gelled together and they all sounded like one band."

Jones and unrelated bassist Richard Jones recently parted ways with longtime drummer Stuart Cable. But the Language, Sex, Violence, Other? release featuring Weyler brought the band back to a place that some fans thought that they couldn't return to.

"It gave the audience and our fans and ourselves confidence in the whole thing again," says Jones. "As much as the press were waiting for us to fall to bits because we lost our longtime friend and band member, we actually got our heads down, did the work, and like we told everybody, this band has always been about the songs."

Over the years, the band have developed and pushed their songwriting and musical abilities. In doing so, they've almost reinvented songs from their past, and they're now enthusiastically approaching shows with a newfound energy.

"When [opening track] 'Superman' finishes, it says, without saying, 'Welcome to the fucking show,'" says Jones. "Then to go straight into a track like 'Doorman,' it just shows this energy of a band that has so many different avenues that has nothing to do with stuff like 'Have A Nice Day' or 'Handbags And Gladrags,' which happen to be tracks that swamped the airwaves."

With songs constantly evolving through years of live performance, Jones remains solidly behind the original album tracks and has no desire to re-enter the studio to give them George Lucas-like updates.

"I think they would come out a lot different, but I don't think it would necessarily be the right thing to do. The naivete or uncertainty or lack of ability or whatever it might have been that made the songs sound great at the time we recorded is what makes them great today."

The live album includes the previously unreleased "Jayne," a distinctly rough-sounding song that displays the band's desire to avoid overdubs and attempt to relay the live experience as honestly as possible.

"For us personally, I think it has a lot to do with just capturing an energy," says Jones.

"We had great confidence playing and we had a lot of fun playing and we caught the songs in a way that we've always wanted to release them. Some of them are quite scruffy and warts and all. They're not perfect recordings by any means, but we captured something."

For fans who came out for the recent tour, the allure of Live At Dakota is obvious. But Jones feels that the album presents a band that even fairweather and non-fans can turn to.

"I think that it will open their eyes to our music. Sometimes people misconceive bands by one track a year on the radio and it's not necessarily a true representation of that band. It's just one song, and that can become bigger than the band almost."

Following the release of the live album will be a live DVD of their performances. Jones is glad that they waited until the time felt right to do that as well.

"It's kind of nice that we waited this long. It's not like we're a band that puts out a DVD every Christmas just to take advantage of the market."