A Matter of Trust:The Bridge to Russia (2014)


 

 Disc One 
  1. Odoya
  2. Prelude/The Angry Young Man
  3. Honesty
  4. The Ballad of Billy the Kid
  5. She's Always a Woman
  6. Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
  7. Goodnight Saigon
  8. Stiletto
  9. Big Man on Mulberry Street
  10.Baby Grand
  11.What's Your Name
  12.The Longest Time
  13.An Innocent Man
  
 Disc Two
  1. Pressure
  2. Allentown
  3. A Matter of Trust
  4. Only the Good Die Young
  5. It's Still Rock and Roll To Me
  6. Sometimes A Fantasy
  7. You May Be Right
  8. Uptown Girl
  9. Big Shot
  10.Back in the U.S.S.R.
  11.The Times They Are A-Changin'
  12.She Loves You (Rehearsal)
  13.New York State of Mind (Rehearsal)
  14.Piano Man

 

It must have sounded like a good idea in the boardroom: revisit Billy Joel’s 1987 Kohuept album, dress it up with the full setlist, and repackage it for a new generation of completists. After all, the man still sells out arenas more than twenty years after retiring from studio recording—why not squeeze one more release out of the archives?

The original Kohuept (a phonetic take on the Russian word for “concert”) was a novel, if flawed, endeavor: a live document of Joel’s historic tour of the Soviet Union at the tail end of the Cold War. At the time, it at least had uniqueness in its favor—no other Western rock star had made quite the same splash behind the Iron Curtain. But now, with a slew of vastly superior live albums in the Joel canon, this expanded version feels like little more than a curio. And not a particularly compelling one.

Let’s address the fundamental problem first: the audience. This is not your typical raucous, beer-soaked, stadium-sized throng. The Russian crowd, bemused and unfamiliar with both Joel and the idioms of American rock, responds with a kind of polite bewilderment. You could mistake them for a symphony audience, or perhaps mourners at a state funeral. There are long silences, tentative applause, and a palpable sense of cultural disconnect. Joel works hard to bridge the gap—sometimes too hard—but the result is often more awkward than inspiring.

To his credit, the performances from Joel and his band are, technically speaking, professional. But energy-wise, the show never really lifts off. The translation issues are glaring: at one point, Joel attempts to explain the narrative behind The Ballad of Billy the Kid through an on-stage translator, and the audience’s reaction suggests they’re being read bureaucratic instructions, not the setup for a rock epic.

Vocally, Joel is not at his best. The newer tracks, particularly those from The Bridge, reveal strain—raspy deliveries, clipped phrasing, the early signs of a voice starting to fray around the edges. It’s forgivable, perhaps, given the context and the grueling schedule of the tour, but it hardly helps matters.

In its original 1987 release, Kohuept had a defensible rationale—he didn't really have a live album of "hits", and fans were starved for something beyond the studio polish. But in a post-12 Gardens Live world, this one pales. The added material in the expanded version provides a fuller picture, yes, but it’s like seeing more angles of a still life that never quite came to life in the first place.

In short: this is for the completists, the obsessives, the ones who need every scrap of Joel’s output for the shelf. For everyone else, there are a dozen better documents of what Billy Joel can do in front of a crowd. This one, sadly, remains his most ambitious misfire.

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