Vocals too?
Yes! I think he must be working with a vocal coach because, to my ears at least, he has overall pulled back on a lot of the problematic improvising and has reconnected with his breath support. Does this mean he is perfectly perfect at all times? No, in fact the one glaring mistake I could hear on PMU was using his rough effect in his upper register. That's the same exact mistake that got him into a vocal injury to begin with back in 1994. I wish he wouldn't do it, for the health of his light-lyric tenor voice - lighter voices are not meant to push like that. But it's stylistic habits that may lead him into a crash-and-burn scenario. It's not simply blaming his age or whatever. Not saying you did this, but others tend to just write him off as being all done - there's another recent thread in fact where a discussion was taking place about how and why he should be replaced - and I could not with any dignity reply to that part of the discussion, so I ignored it.
I've defended James forever. I've never ever had a problem with his live vocals. Being a guitarist, JP was the sticking point, but my second favourite member has always been James. Love his stage presence, his sound, his look, he's just a badass dude.
I'm glad I'm not the only one with a strong second favorite. Mine is Jordan Rudess. I don't play keyboards but I'm a huge fan of excellent keyboards and I'm actually a DT fan because I heard the Octavarium intro on Score and was immediately blown away to another dimension. To this day that's the holy grail moment in all of their music and I hope to see it played live one day because I will be like the crying lady when I do.
But James' voice got to me soon after. Literally it's the most beautifully nuanced, gorgeous tone of any tenor voice I have ever heard. That coming from one who has worked with opera singers. I
know what he is capable of. And that's why I appreciate discussion of what may be going on (which I believe is all about the
approach) rather than people just saying,
well he's old, over and over again.
It legit makes me sad.
Some moments in the last dvd made me sad. Live clips of The Astonishing make me sad. I do know what you're saying. But, it's habits. He can fix this. He's not just, done.
This Rio performance is painful to the ears. Plus he's trying to have the energy to still make it work but it must be so difficult for him. For a band of this caliber and as much as I love the guy though, this performance isn't up to scratch.
I respectfully disagree that it's "painful to the ears", aside from a few random moments (see my above comment about PMU). I think post-Astonishing, 98% isn't bad.
He's in the band until the end for me
For me as well (obviously). 😎