On Wednesday, at a gig that stands head and shoulders above any other I’ve been to so far this year, Taxi Violence launched their new album ‘A Long Way From Home’ at the Planetarium, off Queen Victoria Street, in Cape Town.

Aided by Nico Roos (The Sleepers) on guitar, Richard Brunyee (We Set Sail) on keys and Lara Block on cello, Taxi took their performance ethic to a whole other level under a dome of projected constellations, and I wasn’t the only who noticed.

Taking old favourites like ‘The Mess’, ‘Untie Yourself’ and ‘Devil ‘n Pistol’ and in some cases, reworking them completely so that they’re only recognisable by their lyrics, Taxi Violence have produced a masterpiece of an album that shuns all bad memories of the production disaster that was ‘The Turn’.

New additions to the Taxi track family include ‘Blue Song’, ‘Long Way From Home’ and the gorgeous ‘Between the Heavens and the Deep Blue Sea’ which they dedicated to vocalist George’s father who very sadly passed away last year.

Now Wednesday night wasn’t your usual gathering of creatives either, where black-leather-clad posers slapped themselves on the back for a job “well done”. I’ve been to plenty of those before and regardless of the booze being free, those launches are super retarded. Instead, the evening brought a truck-load of good vibes but more importantly, was a culmination of intense hard work that will no doubt pay off for Taxi. Case in point, Taxi have a cracking nation-wide tour in the pipeline and ‘Heads or Tails’ has already been playlisted on 5fm, receiving a generous amount of airplay.

Have a little listen to short snippets of all the reworked songs and their original counterparts below.

Snippets from the Unplugged Album : ‘Long Way From Home’ by Taxi Violence

Bottom line – if you buy one album in the next few months, let it be ‘A Long Way From Home’. Trust me, I’m very rarely wrong about these things.