A press release announcing the appearance of Umphrey's McGee's two-CD set Live at the Murat calls it the band's "first official live album," which may come as some surprise to fans who thought the previous discs Greatest Hits, Vol. 3 (1998), Songs for Older Women (1999), and One Fat Sucka (2000) (not to mention the EP Local Band Does OKlahoma [2004] and the DVDs =Live from the Lake Coast [2003] and =Wrapped Around Chicago: New Years at the Riv [2005]) were sanctioned concert recordings. In its liner notes, the group puts it another way. "What we realized in late 2006," they write, "was that we had yet to release a live album that captured the band achieving the best of what we thought we could be." Live at the Murat (recorded over two nights in April 2007 at the Egyptian Room of the Murat Center in Indianapolis, IN) is that album, the band clearly states. Despite devoting much of its recording career to live performances, the band and its publicity firm's decision to position the set as something of a new beginning is understandable. As of the fall of 2007, Umphrey's McGee were coming up on a decade of professional work, which is long enough to expect that the band should no longer be defined as a developing act. At ten years in, in 1975, the Grateful Dead, the godfather of jam bands, had long since become a nationally recognized group with a string of chart albums. Even Phish, a closer career model for Umphrey's McGee (and a group whose mantle they hope to assume), broke out at the close of their first decade with a major-label recording contract and an album in the upper half of the Billboard 200. Both of these predecessors really caught fire as the result of double live albums, Live/Dead in the case of the Dead, A Live One for Phish. Umphrey's McGee, which managed one week at number 186 with its last studio album, 2006's Safety in Numbers, released, like Live at the Murat, on fellow jam band the String Cheese Incident's independent SCI Fidelity label, may be hoping for the same thing, a live album that defines the band and takes it to the next level. But while Live at the Murat does seem like a good summation of the group's strengths, that may not happen.

1		In the Kitchen
2		Acoustic Improvisation
3		Electric Improvisation
4		In the Kitchen
5		Higgins
6		The Fuzz
7		Nothing Too Fancy (End)
8		Ringo
9		Hajimemashite
10		Ringo
11		Eat
12		40's Theme
13		The Triple Wide
14		Angular Momentum
15		Push the Pig
16		Out of Order
17		White Man's Moccassins
18		Padgett's Profile