This was a damn shame too, because the band's performance was simply fantastic. These guys had no problem reproducing the complex arrangements of most of their songs, and usually improved upon the studio versions by interjecting loads of great improvisation. The show closer "Shades", from their debut album, was nearly twice as long as the original, for instance. The thing I love about Echolyn is that they have two equally talented, but very different sounding lead vocalists in Brett Kull and Ray Weston. Kull has the straight-forward rock vocals, and Weston has some very nuanced, and expressive vocals that give the band their unique sound.

The show gets of to a great start, musically speaking, with back to back songs, "Texas Dust" and "Swingin' The Axe" from Echolyn's fantastic 2000 reunion album, Cowboy Poems Free. The highlight of the show would also come from that album in the form of "Brittany", a song about a brother dealing with the emotions of his brother having been sent off to fight in the second world war. The song is based on the true story of keyboardist Christopher Buzby's uncle who is buried over on Normandy beach, and he introduces the song and dedicates it to two girls who are currently serving over in Iraq. This performance was so good, I will forgive them for skipping my favorite song from that album, "Human Lottery". Echolyn's second set consisted of the entire 49-minute version of "Mei", which featured a six-person orchestra that the band brought out to join them. This song may take some time to grow on you, as it is very long and is extremely varied in texture and theme. I think this song would have made a much better twenty-minute epic, as there are many parts that are absolutely brilliant, while other sections bog down significantly.

There were already numerous reviews of this DVD out on the web before I got around to it, and I am quite perplexed at how almost non of them even mention the atrocious video editing. I went back and watched it again just to make sure I wasn't imagining things or just overreacting. NOPE! I'm not exaggerating when I say that there is probably more video featuring non-performance images than of the actual live performance. You've got the entire bag of tricks: purposely blurred shots, negative exposure, hideousgraphics, cheesy fade in/outs, slow motion, and numerous other unexplainableeffects. This easily joins Yes' Keys To Ascension, and Ozzy Osbourne's Live & Loud in the worst-edited-video hall of fame. The only decent effect was when they alternated between some mid-90's performance footage of the band, back when they were still long-haired hippy people, during the performance of "My Dear Wormwood".