ALBUM REVIEW: Live from Maximum Festival – Yawning Man

YAWNING MAN’s live work has always been a spellbinding experience. On this reissue of their live performance from 2013 at Italy’s Live from Maximum Festival, along with new album art work, the show has been remastered to exemplify their work in a new way. This isn’t a record for anyone expecting to listen to crowd interactions and prolonged. Carefully curated, it picks between songs from their then eight years of playing, with a few rarities you may be less familiar with. From their debut of the same name Rock Formations is an obvious starting point for this track listing. Smooth, light and then unabashedly heavy, it’s a straight indicator of how well YAWNING MAN have always preformed as a live outfit.

Far-Off Adventure is especially expressive and well balanced, grasping clearly at the bass and drums as much as the guitars. It’s great to be able to hear the dynamics of the trio working in a live space. there’s an urgency and a feeling of in the moment that can’t be captured quite the same on in a studio space. Equally, Stoney Lonesome and Perpetual Oyster present the bass melodies especially well, perhaps better than ever before. Clean, clear and biting with that tingle of live excitement, it’s wonderful to hear well known tunes appreciated by the crowd.

Manolete works so well as a live tune, so vivid and reverberating, it needs to be heard out somewhere hot and dusty, and this has that vibe in spades. It broods and captivates and shows the mystical sense that YAWNING MAN can bring to their music. The solid bass work on Ground Swell is more apparent than ever in this live version. This is an expanse of technical movements and a psychedelic, hypnotic in it’s own right but more impressive still to have been preformed so energetically in one take. Nine minutes of damn near perfect desert rock instrumentalism is a hard feat to master!

Brooding and sparkling, Dark Meet is from a split record coming from the same year this was preformed, which may be less known to many new listeners. It’s nice to have moments like this, especially towards the end, a treat for those who missed them the first time.

A short, impactful listen, this is just what you’d expect from YAWNING MAN. Live music, played with polish and confidence, no nonsense and professionalism. Following from 2019’s Macedonian Lines, Live at Maximum Festival is a great revisit to some of their earlier work, with some gems you may have missed from split albums or from rarer releases; A solid reissue, all in all.

Rating: 6/10

Live from Maximum Festival is out now via Go Down Records.

Like YAWNING MAN on Facebook.