8.4 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A live concert performance of Grammy-winning pop/soul sensation Adele Adkins at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Starring: AdeleMusic | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 2.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 CD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Maybe there’s hope for the music industry after all. When the Buggles famously opined that “video killed the radio star” (the first video broadcast on MTV), it may have been tongue in cheek, but it signaled a perhaps depressing trend in the music business where image was at least as important, arguably more important, than any intrinsic musical content, let alone talent. The eighties and beyond were decades filled with faux artists (Milli Vanilli, anyone?) who looked great but turned out to be musical analogs to the Wizard of Oz, where what was behind the curtain didn’t exactly match the majesty of the illusion. How refreshing, then, to see a young artist like Adele springboard to the top of the pop music heap with nary a look backward. Adele, still in her early twenties, has little to recommend her in terms of image. Full figured, as the euphemism goes, Adele looks like a younger, more attractive version of Comedy Central roast regular Lisa Lampanelli (sorry, Lisa, I’m sure you’ll get over it), especially when Adele is dressed, as she is here, in a poofy dress that doesn’t hide the singer’s less than wafer thin physique. But once Adele opens her mouth, all bets are off, and it probably wouldn’t matter if she were a six eyed alien with purple skin—this girl can sing, in a full throated, soulful, smoky way that is redolent of any number of other singers, including America’s Bonnie Raitt (whom Adele covers in this concert) and even the Eurythmics’ Annie Lennox. But Adele is very much her own artist, with a melismatic flair that is quite singular. She’s also an unabashed alto, exulting in the lower ranges of the female voice, itself something unusual in the usual helium-voiced world (for both males and females) of Top 40 hitdom. This September 2011 concert was recorded at the “poshest venue” (to use Adele’s terminology) in London, the Royal Albert Hall, and while the Beatles may have sung about how many holes it takes to fill the cavernous building, Adele makes it quite clear that it only takes one zaftig female to fill every seat in the place.
Adele Live at The Royal Albert Hall is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Columbia Records with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is a surprisingly shoddy looking transfer from Columbia, which usually do excellently sharp and detailed high definition concert releases. While close-ups exhibit a fair amount of fine detail, other parts of this video presentation are pretty ragged, including dark shots of the audience which swarm with grain which gets to the level of digital noise, and a lot of very noticeable banding when the cameras are facing the battery of upstage lights which backlight the artist and her band. Colors are generally excellent, with bold and bright saturation, and black levels are above average, though there's still noticeable crush upstage and around the edges of the darkened stage quite a bit of the time.
Luckily the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix included on the Blu-ray is superb for the most part. Directionality is quite well handled (listen for example to the glockenspiel patch that starts out "Hometown Glory" and how discretely positioned in the right channels it is). Adele's voice is captured in all of its singularity, and the balance between the singer and the band is very well mixed. The one problem here is the overwhelming sound of the audience, which completely subsumes Adele and her band at times. It's interesting to compare the mix on the Blu-ray with that on the included CD, for the CD mixes the audience much further back, allowing more sonic presence for the singer and her band (this is not to say that the audience is inaudible on the CD, for it most certainly is, especially in the "singalong" moments). Fidelity is superb on the DTS track, with ample low end and great dynamic range.
You, Me and Albert (1080i; 8:31). This extremely engaging, albeit quite brief, featurette (in black and white) offers Adele preparing for the concert (wait until you see her in bathrobe and curlers making her morning tea), interspersed with some backstage shots of her getting ready to take the stage at the Royal Albert Hall. Adele's very distinctive genuineness comes through loud and clear on this sweet little featurette.
As odd as it may sound, Adele has something of the same blue collar, working class cred that The Boss himself has on this side of the pond. Adele is unfazed by her stardom and seems to be well in control of her future, if her current health problems can be successfully overcome. This excellent concert finds her in fine form, both vocally and in her unabashedly hilarious monologues in between the songs. Though the video quality of this release leaves a bit to be desired, the audio quality is excellent, so overall this release comes Recommended.
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