Tonight -- the fourth and final night of
the Mission's marathon dip into the past, replaying one entire classic album per night -- it's
Carved in Sand, their last truly great album but also the first to show the signs of wear and tear that reduced the band to a pale joke for much of the 1990s and beyond. Probably half of
Carved in Sand would not have passed muster as B-sides in the past, and the fact that the original album was twinned with a second disc of outtakes only upped the odds against it ever standing proud alongside Children and
God's Own Medicine. But "Butterfly on a Wheel" was a beauty, "Hands Across the Ocean" a triumph, and even a dodgy cover of
the Kinks' "Mr. Pleasant" had its good points. All of which renders the album's live incarnation all the more astounding, as it pointedly refuses to acknowledge its own failings and emerges as powerful, and as essential, as any of the discs that precede it in this series. This same night, incidentally, was also filmed for DVD release and, again, while grumpy purists might have preferred to see The First Chapter given such deluxe treatment, it's hard to be disappointed by the decision -- especially as it all wraps up with a five-song sequence that dives back into the past to reconnect with "Deliverance," "Like a Child Again," "Serpent's Kiss," "Wasteland" -- and, indeed, "Mr. Pleasant"! Those same malcontents will probably look at this series and choose carefully between the four discs on offer. They would be wrong to do so. All four are superlative; all four are essential. And, like
the Mission themselves, all four are timeless. ~ Dave Thompson