Critic's Review
Charles Donovan, All Music Guide
A concert recording by as fine and proficient a musician as Coltrane should be a delightful prospect. Instead, Live! is an under-produced, squawky set, in which Coltrane comes close to massacring some of her best songs. The album is essentially Coltrane and a piano (synths appear on a couple of tracks), and it reveals how reliant on percussion some of her songs are. Gospel numbers, including the popular "Go Like Elijah," sound a little deflated without the powerful drumming and backing vocals of their studio counterparts. Her ballads - "Road To Tomorrow" and "You" - work far better. Maddeningly, the audience claps sluggishly during every song, to particularly jarring effect, and Coltrane's voice comes over forced and strained.
