Record Reviews

Larry

A Family Album (Luck)

Larry, a local seven-piece, is capable of conjuring up the spirits of three heavyweight jam bands: the Grateful Dead, Phish, and Blues Traveler. While not quite as accomplished as these bigwigs, five-year-old Larry is poised to join their ranks having learned at least one valuable lesson: It's virtually impossible to capture a jam band's energy within four studio walls. Therefore, most of A Family Album was recorded live last fall at the Mercury, with recording engineer Larry Telford adding tracks and electronic wizardry in the studio, balancing the live feel of the stage with the clarity and separation of the studio. Regardless of the setting, Larry's game is fun, the band injecting the proto-Phish cum mouth organ "Seven" with brief references to classic Def Leppard, and adding a few measures of Rush's "YYZ" in the midst of the mammoth 20-minute "Here I Am." While this tune showcases the band's strong suit of hitting the stratosphere with space jams, it also clearly illustrates that vocals are not their forte, making their connection to the jam band mothership, the Dead, that much stronger: average vocals with glimpses of transcendent group interplay, as in the early-Nineties Dead-like lead-off track, "Save Me." Nevertheless, if Larry keeps writing parts like the intro to the Meters-esque "I Don't Know,"estimated profits should be within their reach.

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