Over the course of seven albums, the ever-unpredictable Rheostatics have been Canadian music's worst kept secret. Their live shows have inspired a rabid fan base, who are always guaranteed to never see the same show twice (especially during Green Sprouts Music Week, the band's annual six-day residency at a Toronto club). This album serves as an introduction to the band whose recorded output has sent more shockwaves through the Canadian underground than any homegrown band before or since.

Recorded live by Gary Stokes, the selections on Double Live are culled from an arena tour opening for The Tragically Hip (Nov-Dec 1996), the band's subsequent theatre and club tour (Feb. 1997) and two nights at the Bathurst St. Theatre in Toronto (Apr. 1997). Ten songs on Double Live have never appeared on a Rheostatics recording before and two of these are brand new, although most of the unreleased material will be familiar to fans from live shows over the last ten years. Of the old favourites, some appear in drastically different versions ( Record Body Count ), while some are extended well beyond the seven-minute mark ( Horses ) and others capture the band's spontaneous on-stage humour ( Legal Age Life, Ballad of Wendel Clark ). The accompanying booklet features dozens of archival photos and lyrics to the new songs.

The album's 29 songs coalesce into the ultimate Rheostatics experience, carrying the listener through electric Crazy Horse workouts, Weill cabaret, acoustic folk anthems, suburban artrock epics, country hoe-downs, pure pop, children's music, old school punk, space rock, and cinematic soundscapes. If you can name one other band in this country - or anywhere else - who can pull that off in 130 minutes, you'd be talking about the most creative and fascinating quartet of this decade.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Rheostatics!

Michael Barclay- ID Magazine