Keith Urban

Keith Urban's DVD Livin' Right Now chronicles his tour-closing two-night stand at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, December 14-15, 2004. It's a good time for a live video from Urban, who topped the country charts and went platinum with Be Here, the album the tour was promoting, after several years of increasing success. At this point, he was able to perform a 100-minute set peppered with major country hits ("Days Go By," "Raining on Sunday," "You're My Better Half," "Where the Blacktop Ends," "But for the Grace of God," "You'll Think of Me," "Somebody Like You," "Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me"). But the chief musical appeal remained his accomplished lead guitar work. Urban, an expatriate New Zealander, is anything but a Nashville purist; in fact, his music is only nominally definable as country, due to the frequent inclusion of a Dobro, banjo, or mandolin in his arrangements and the slight country twang in his singing voice, acquired from years of listening to country music as a child. Otherwise, this is really pop/rock, occasionally working up a sweat, but mostly in an agreeable adult contemporary vein. At the Wiltern, Urban turns up in old jeans and a T-shirt, his shoulder-length hair parted in the middle and falling in sheets over his narrow face, which is decorated with fashionable stubble; he's a country Bryan Adams. The enthusiastic audience consists almost entirely of women, which is no surprise when you listen to the lyrics to his songs. Over and over, he pledges undying love and devotion, declaring, "You Won" and celebrating "Making Memories of Us." When love doesn't work out, he is heartbroken, confessing, "Tonight I Wanna Cry." The concert begins with a series of rock-oriented songs, gives way to a mini-set of acoustic numbers, and then revs back into an energetic finish that includes a cover of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'," an appropriate inclusion with its many L.A. references. Urban is really more of a traditionalist than any sort of innovator, but his is a tradition that owes more to Southern California than the American South. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide