As part of Consequence’s Post-Grunge Week, we’re taking a look at one of the genre’s starting points: Live’s terrific 1994 album, Throwing Copper. Read the review, then check out our picks for the 50 Greatest Post-Grunge Songs.
Live released their standout third album, Throwing Copper, on April 26th, 1994, as a heavy shadow lay over the rock world. Kurt Cobain had died a few weeks before. Rock felt wounded, and audiences were ready to embrace a lighter take on grunge.
Live were not fashioning themselves as the saviors of grunge, and they likely didn’t predict that their new album would reach people the way it did. Yet, there’s such a widescreen, ambitious air to Throwing Copper that when it did arrive it could easily knock people to their knees. It’s a mid ’90s statement that encapsulated the past and future of rock, marking the beginning of the post-grunge movement that would soon dominate the charts.
Perhaps the largest signifiers of “post-grunge” are the influence of Nirvana and Alice in Chains on the vocals, along with similar touchstones from fellow Seattle prophets Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, Eddie Vedder, and Chris Cornell, respectively. Each had a signature vocal style. One could say they’re inimitable, and yet, that didn’t stop a bevy of rock singers emulating their pierced, curdled tone.
Live’s Ed Kowalczyk was likely not attempting to mirror some of the genre’s forbearers by the time the band holed up with Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison to record Throwing Copper. But his crackling tenor absolutely evokes Layne Staley, cutting through deeper guitars and frenetic action like a buzzsaw. Kowalczyk has his own style, and his existential lyrics arrive from a different place than the original grunge scribes. Still, whether conscious or not, Kowalczyk’s vowel-forward cadence and tempered grit, especially on the gorgeous, anthemic single “I Alone” or the raging opening track “The Dam at Otter Creek” belongs to the lineage of grunge.
But beyond the vocals, Live imbued their harder sound with moments of sun-kissed beauty, the soft warmth often coming from Kowalczyk and Chad Taylor’s guitars. The iconic “Lightning Crashes” is the album’s most serene and sentimental moment, and the guitar tone that guides the song undoubtedly became an influential vehicle for post-grunge ballads. The tossing and turning of back-half cut “Pillar of Davidson” evokes a kind of heartland rock, albeit with more power and darkness baked within its open-hearted approach. Unlike Nirvana or Alice in Chains, Live sounded less indebted to the punk and metal of the ’80s. When they accelerate, it’s not to conjure a frenzy; it’s in service of a greater release.