"Live albums always offer a precarious task for musicians. If a band merely fills the studio molds with too-perfect clarity, fans want for the lack of stage improv. If the band jams on the closing riff for six minutes, the fans yawn. So what's the perfect balance of fiddling and play-by-numbers? If you've ever exclaimed, "Man, the guitarist adds a little vibrato to the one note in the hook! And the riff has this little extra stutter," ask yourself why this really matters. Do five subtle changes really warrant praise? And if it's freeform re-interpretation you want, go like Phish."

The above sentiments appeared verbatim in Brent DiCrescenzo's review of Built to Spill's Live. They also appeared in his review of Sunny Day Real Estate's Live. Now I'm using them for my own purposes because this Posies album is also live and he used it twice so it must mean something. This record's not called Live, though. I bet you gathered that from the information up there at the top. Did you? If you did, then you also saw that it says stuff about icebergs and being alive. Yeah, this is a postmortem release capturing the Posies at what they consider to be their greatest moment before sinking (and resurfacing in places like Big Star, Sunny Day Real Estate and Fountains of Wayne).

Alive Before the Iceberg was recorded in Barcelona on a July night in 1998. Judging from guitarist Ken Stringfellow's liner notes, the Posies seemed to, uh, like playing in Spain. From what I gather (actually, he spells it out in lurid detail) they drank a lot, passed out a lot, woke up not knowing where they were a lot, and Fucking Rocked a lot. The Posies did this? But they do such nice harmonies! My mom likes them! (She doesn't really, but I bet she would). They fucking rocked?!

They did. And maybe that's their point with this release: "Listen up people, we fucking rocked! It's all right there. Listen you assholes!" Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow's harmonies are belted out like they're playing Giants' Stadium without mics as they try to stay in tune and presumably, stay standing. The guitar is all over the place while keeping to the confines of each song. There's no unnecessary soloing on the tracks, which combine songs from the band's last three albums and a gut-punching cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender."

Recorded before the release of Success, it "premiers" songs from that album; the perfect opener (here and on Success), "Somehow Everything," the cyclic guitar triplets of "Start a Life," and the mesmerizing grandfather clock harmonies on "You're the Beautiful One" are captured in a previously undocumented state. Iceberg pulls mostly from the Posies' 1996 album, Amazing Disgrace, with a light-speed rendition of "Grant Hart" splitting the set in two and leading straight into an equally energized "Flavour of the Month."

Iceberg's track listing largely serves as a selection of some of the band's better lesser-known songs (despite the inclusion of their restrained hit "Dream all Day") and as a sign of the Posies' impending destruction. Before the chain-gang staccato guitars of "Broken Record," Auer announces, "Maybe you can get off the damn dance floor for this one." I can just picture a crowd in front of the stage taking that as an invitation to pound a giant crater into the floor. I think that's what he pictured, too. The band knew exactly what they were doing, even then. They knew they were close to the end and that's what they captured here.

Alive Before the Iceberg is the Posies summing up their career up with 12 songs played half-drunk in front of a crowd of Spaniards who probably didn't know that a posie is a bunch of flowers. It didn't matter. What mattered to them was the moment-- the energy of a band wound so tight they would explode later that year. They didn't care about freeform re-interpretation here, and I didn't either. If that's what I want, I'll go see Phish next month at Radio City Music Hall.

-Chip Chanko