The Corrs - Live at Lansdowne Road

The Corrs are one of those groups that you can hear live or from a studio recording and find them to have the same sound and quality of performance, without the need for electronic manipulation. The vocals are near perfect to the album recordings.

Live at Lansdowne Road is a live recording from their hometown of Dublin. This was a "homecoming" concert after their recent world tour. My initial fear was that this was just a live concert recording to keep sales of the current album on the move. Far from it. This is indeed a worthy recording in its own right.

The Concert itself is mostly a mix of songs from their previous work. In fact 10 of the 17 music tracks are on the "Unplugged" DVD. If you were buying the DVD purely for the music, you probably wouldn't immediately think of picking this up. The other 7 tracks are a good mix as part of the concert and bring the vibe up and down during the course of the event. Track 11, "I Love To Love You" is something I had not heard for ages, and is from their previous album. It was a welcome addition to the concert.

All the tracks, even the ones that exist on the Unplugged DVD, are well worth listening to again. I found many of the tracks far more entertaining on this DVD as a live performance (eg. Track 8, Runaway) than on the Unplugged version. A worthy buy if you're in to their music and want to listen to different versions of their songs.

Most guys (and girls) would agree that Andrea is a stunning looking individual. My personal opinion, having seen her in the Unplugged DVD and also on TV interviews, was that she didn't really have much personality to go with it. This is the first recording I have seen which she seems to have some excitement about what she's doing and seem to have some real attachment with the audience. Either it's a good acting job, or she means it. Either way, it's a major improvement!

Also worth a mention is Track 7, No Frontiers, which is sung by Sharon and Caroline. Although this too was on the Unplugged DVD, this seemed to be a much better, "more emotional" rendition. The crowd really enjoys it too.

The video quality is impressive, again, given it is a live performance at a football stadium at dusk. Given the great majority of the concert has dark backgrounds and very brightly coloured performers in the foreground (red, fuchsia, purple and blue outfits) the contrast is very good. Black levels seemed very good also.

Detail is very high in the main, there are lots of time when I was surprised at how much detail I was seeing (the hair on Andrea's arms for example).

The DVD is presented in 1.85:1 16x9 anamorphic video. For those of you with the right hardware, you will undoubtedly be impressed with the 16:9 presentation. I reviewed the disc on a 4x3 TV as the picture was still "letterboxed", but not too severely. There is no down side to this anyway, especially if you're in to playing the subtitled lyrics and singing along with the music.

There are a number of long shots across the stadium that are "picture postcard" views which show up the rich colour in this recording.

There is a slight pause for the layer change at the start of track 13, which is a non-music track introducing the "Dreams" track. It is noticeable, but it is placed at the most inoffensive position on the DVD.

The audio for the main concert part of this DVD is presented in full Dolby Digital 5.1 and also Linear PCM Stereo. The LFE channel is used extensively throughout. The PCM track seems very weak by comparison. I only listened to the PCM track once and immediately reverted to the 5.1 mix. This is not to say the PCM track was poor (it's not, it's very good), just that the 5.1 track was far, far better. It's a pity that the great majority of new DVD buyers are going to plug this straight in to the back of a TV and not get the chance to listen to a 6 channel sound track.

The surround effects are also well utilised in the 5.1 track. The crowd participation in particular spends a great deal of time on the surround speakers, and adds to the live performance vibe greatly. It is never invasive and always appropriate to the mood during the concert. This is used particularly effectively in the first 90 seconds of Track 8 "Runaway" where the Andrea Corr (Lead Vocals) lets the audience take control. It's one of the most emotional tracks on the entire DVD.

There's not too much more to be said about the audio portion of this DVD, other than it is excellent, especially the fact that it is a live recording at a football stadium. Warner Music Vision have done an excellent job again (in my opinion, The Unplugged DVD is still the best music DVD recording I have heard).

There is a documentary on the "In Blue" album describing some of the interesting things that happened during it's production. The four of them talk about their experiences in making the album. This is subtitled in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. A strange authoring decision was that the default button to play the documentary sets the English subtitle on as default rather than having the subtitles turned off. Maybe they think that the Corrs' accents are too hard to understand without them? A strange decision, but nothing really worth quibbling about! The documentary is recorded in Dolby 2.0 Stereo.

There are two tracks recorded at another live performance at Fleadh 2000; Irresistible and No More Cry. These are presented in Linear PCM Stereo only. It is a much smaller stadium they are playing to, and the general presentation of these songs has slightly less impact than that of the main concert. These recordings have a much more "video" quality to them, whereas the main concert seems to me to be much more film-like.

The last extra is the "Breathless" video clip from the new album. It too is presented in Linear PCM Stereo. One interesting thing I discovered from watching the documentary was that the producer and writer of Breathless was Mutt Lange, who is Shania Twain's husband (and co-writer). This explained why every time I heard this track, I kept thinking about Shania Twain. I'm glad it wasn't just my imagination!

If you're a Corrs fan, and have the Unplugged DVD already, you would definitely still buy this DVD, if for nothing else than the ability to listen to their songs in a different setting. The addition of the Breathless video clip is a great idea, although I would have loved to hear it mixed in 5.1 audio.

If you're a first-time Corrs buyer, I would probably steer you to the Unplugged DVD, which is a "cleaner" rendition of their songs (and something you can just have playing in the background without the audience noise throughout), but I would be equally happy with either on my shelf.