Sheryl Crow – Live At the Capitol Theatre Blu-ray Review

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Sheryl Crow’s Best Live Concert Release

Since exploding onto the national stage in 1993 with the multi-platinum Tuesday Night Music Club album, the one-time music teacher and back-up vocalist from Missouri has forged a global music career to become one of the most well-known female stars in the music business. She’s respected across the industry and her consistent hitmaking over the decades has earned the singer legions of adult fans. Sheryl Crow’s country and rock sensibilities have always served her distinct brand of female pop well, leading to a litany of popular hits with all audiences. Crow was easily one of the biggest music stars in the world during the 1990s.

On November 10th 2017, at the historic Capitol Theatre in Port Chester New York, Sheryl Crow played the final night of her Be Myself tour. The show features Sheryl with her all-new band in top form, performing new songs from her 8th studio album. Sheryl sings the titular track “Be Myself” from it along with new hits “Halfway There” and “Atom Bomb.” She also plays her classic hits, including “All I Wanna Do”, “Leaving Las Vegas”, “The First Cut Is The Deepest”, Soak Up The Sun”, “If It Makes You Happy” and more.

This is her best concert release and is a welcome addition for Sheryl Crow fans

This package includes a vintage black and white flashback introduction of the many music legends who have graced the Capitol Theatre stage over the years, interspersed with exclusive interview segments by Sheryl recently filmed at her farm in Nashville. These interview clips have Sheryl personally reflecting on her life and career, from her earliest days playing music, to the heights of her global stardom. It’s a revealing glimpse at her thoughts looking back. Some will complain they break up the concert included in the documentary, but these are brief hit-and-run moments that really add to the presentation.

This is a fun, energetic concert with a good sampling of classic Sheryl Crow hits and new songs. The version here of “Run Baby Run” is great stuff, an engaging live performance that draws in the crowd. As a tribute to the recently departed Gregg Allman, she covers his classic Midnight Rider. I’ve always enjoyed her cover of Cat Steven’s “The First Cut Is The Deepest” and it remains a crowd-pleaser. Her backing band plays tightly behind her. It is is a band that has obviously worked out all the kinks by the end of this long tour and enthusiastically responds to the raucous audience.

Sheryl Crow may be closer to Sixty than Fifty these days, but you would never know it by her performance in this concert. She still has that great female rock voice and continues to carry herself with a timeless grace that eludes father time. This is her best concert release and is a welcome addition for her fans. The performances are polished and she shines like a real rock star on stage.

TRACKLISTING:

Every Day Is A Winding Road
A Change Would Do You Good
All I Wanna Do
My Favorite Mistake
Be Myself
Long Way Back Home
Run Baby Run
Can’t Cry Anymore
The First Cut Is The Deepest
Atom Bomb
Half Way There
There Goes The Neighborhood
Leaving Las Vegas
Strong Enough
Heartbeat Away
Roller Skate
Best Of Times
If It Makes You Happy
Soak Up The Sun
Midnight Rider
I Shall Believe

Video

Live at the Capitol Theatre has serviceable picture quality for a new concert. This isn’t the pristine video and captivating direction you’d get from Roger Waters, or some other big musical acts on Blu-ray.

Shots outside the primary stage area have second-rate video. At times, the concert is dimly lit for no good reason. Chroma noise and black crush can be spotted in the darker shots. Tight close-ups of Sheryl Crow and her guitarists have pretty good clarity and detail. Those scenes at least are sharp and with a pumped-up contrast that fits the glossy digital video.

The concert runs over two hours at 121 minutes. It is encoded in low-bitrate MPEG-2 on a BD-25. As you can guess, compression isn’t this presentation’s strong suit. Expect macroblocking and other nasty compression artifacts when lower-resolution audience shots happen. Cleopatra Entertainment could have done better work bringing this average-looking concert to 1080P video.

Audio

The complaint here is that once again Cleopatra Entertainment has failed to include lossless audio, on a music release screaming for an uncompressed mix. The two audio options are a decent 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack and a merely adequate 2.0 Dolby Digital soundtrack. It’s a discrete mix made from the live soundboard recording.

There doesn’t appear to have been any studio sweetening for the band, or Sheryl’s vocals. Nice separation leads to a pleasing mix common to concert performances. Sheryl is mostly anchored in the center channel and crowd reactions are pushed to the rears. The mix envelops the listener with tight bass.

Guitars have a slightly crunchy sound that I find common in lossy audio. If you want to hear a better audio option for the sound, use the included CDs which have every song from the concert.

No subtitles are included.

Extras

Cleopatra Entertainment puts out this Blu-ray plus 2-CD set in a fold-out digipak case sized for the music market. It is distributed by MVD Visual.

A 16-page booklet is included with brief liner notes, credits and copious photographs of the show.

Her Words (19:50 in HD) – Sheryl Crow chats about fifteen different topics in this personal, intimate reflection of her life and career. These interview clips are also interspersed throughout the concert documentary between songs. It’s worth hearing for the personal details that Crow discloses about her music and life story.

Slideshow (02:15 in HD) – Pictures of the event play in the background as one of Sheryl’s song plays.

Trailer (03:50 in HD) – A glossy, fast-cut trailer plugging the event.

Full disclosure: This Blu-ray release was provided to us for review by the label. For information on how we handle all review material, please visit our about us page to learn more about DoBlu’s editorial policies.

The unaltered images below have been taken directly from the actual Blu-ray. For an additional 21 screenshots taken from Sheryl Crow: Live At the Capitol Theatre, early access to all screens (plus the 20,000+ already in our library) in full resolution, dozens of exclusive 4K UHD reviews and other perks, support us on Patreon.