A Collection of New Vinyl for the Audiophile – January, 2015

Last month, we looked at Neil Young’s Time Fades Away as part of his most recent archival box set release. So far, the four included titles have yet to be released singly, but I have to feel like that’s coming soon. Going in, I couldn’t decide if I was most excited to have a pristine copy of On The Beach or Tonight’s The Night. The latter is one of my favorite Rock ‘n Roll records ever. On The Beach is significantly less rocking overall, but the total aesthetic is no less impressive. The three records we’ve mentioned here comprise Neil’s “Ditch Trilogy,” and their grooves carry some of the weightiest memories of my college days within them. Somehow, Neil made these rivers of darkness and sludge sound refreshing, but certainly not clean. I was elated to get my hands on the box, but I told a little lie in last month’s review. I didn’t mean to, I just got a little ahead of myself. I’m an excitable boy.

On The Beach is the quietest of the “Ditch Trilogy” offerings, but it’s not without claws. Levon Helm and Rick Danko join Neil’s band on “Revolution Blues” which is as scathing and scary as any popular tune that I’m aware of. I’m to understand that the song was written in reference to Charles Manson and the paranoia that gripped the Los Angeles area during his heyday. “Revolution” coupled with album opener “Walk On” count for the loudest and most energetic tunes on the record. The other songs, while less bouncy, are no less heavy. We’ve got slow blues involving vampires sucking blood from the earth along with nods and allusions to the LA Scene that Young seems to have found so unpalatable after ascending its ranks. More than once, he mentions hearing “some people” putting him down and stabbing him in his back. Sometimes he seems content to just walk on, other times he doesn’t seem content with anything at all. Taken all around, the album creates a sense of general malaise and resentment through the juxtaposition of warm guitar tones and solemn vocals and lyrical content. It’s an intricate balancing act that sounds so natural and off the cuff in Neil’s hands that you almost feel like you’ve wandered into his living room during the most intimate moments of his creative process. The Earth’s ecology is clearly a concern as is the general unreliability of our fellow man. And our President, specifically. Ol’ Neil never did much to soften the edges when it came time to address Richard Nixon’s politics, but those edges are sharpened to a razor’s edge here. “Motion Pictures” and “Ambulance Blues” close out the proceedings with some of the most profound studio recordings that I’m aware of in Young’s catalog. You might not feel like turning cartwheels after listening to On The Beach, but you won’t feel like sitting still either. There’s a movement toward action in these compositions, but the way is never articulated. Maybe that’s what drew me in so many years ago and what’s kept me coming back for so long. I feel like you either get it or you don’t. I like to feel like I’m on Neil’s side. Who knows what he thinks?

Last month, I mentioned how excited Neil’s fans should be about the contents of this box. I stand by that, but my On The Beach pressing involves some distortion all throughout the title track, and pops and ticks throughout. I’ve consulted someone who carries a little more clout than I do in this industry, and he kindly arranged to have someone at Warner Brothers contact me to resolve the matter. I’ve not heard from anyone. Until I do, I’d be wary of replacing this record (if I even had the option) without assurances that I wouldn’t get a similarly defective copy. The low sonic score is specific to these issues. The rest is a solid “5.”

I’ve been a member of Jack White’s record club for a couple of years now. It’s been alternately magical and mind numbingly frustrating. The guy has ideas for days, but his company falls a little short on execution at times. To the uninitiated, the Vault membership costs $60 quarterly. Usually, you get a full length record (often a double record), a 7-inch single, and a book or DVD or poster or whatever. A few months back, the package consisted of four 7-inch singles in a box. People were mad. I had to send one of the singles back and Third Man replaced it due to a defective pressing. Later, they built a package around White’s Lazaretto. The second side of my copy is not playable. 2014 found Third Man finishing in big style. Three records documenting White’s 2014 Bonnaroo set in its considerable entirety. Supplemented with a DVD of said performance. Supplemented with a patch, faux tour pass, poster, four black and white photographs, and a USB with a bunch of pictures and screen savers on it. Nobody’s complaining about the contents of this package, I can promise you that. It’s a feast for your senses. But how does it sound? Let’s see…

The first record, in a word, sounds like ass. Same whirring, scratchy sound that pulverized my eardrums in the aforementioned singles set and the Lazaretto set. I’ve noticed that this seems to be an issue with Third Man’s colored vinyl releases. I’m not saying that the relationship is causal or even correlated. I am saying that my standard black Third Man releases sound, as a rule, far superior to any that we’ve mentioned so far. The first record in this set is blue. As was Lazaretto. The second record in the Live From Bonnaroo 2014 set is white, and, while it’s a little noisier in spots than I would like, it’s pretty much in line with other non-audiophile quality vinyl releases of the day. The third record is standard black, and it sounds just fine. I won’t be playing the first record again. I’ve lived through this before, and I can say with certainty that no amount of scrubbing, wishing, or praying is going to get the offending sound out of these blue grooves. And that’s too damn bad because lots of my fave Jack songs were front loaded during this performance. And this performance was ferocious. I have the DVD to prove it. I got so frustrated with the quality of the Vault’s vinyl pressings that I was going to cancel my membership a while back. Then, I was granted early admission to one of White’s San Francisco shows as part of my membership. I went straight to the front of the stage for the first time since my youth card expired. That made everything alright. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more powerful Rock and Roll show. (And this a day after he’d incurred an extreme sprained ankle while performing in front of an audience that included Tom Waits amongst its members.)

There are 27 songs included in this set and I can enjoy most of 19. I’ve emailed the folks at Third Man to see if they’re going to make this right. Truthfully, they have little impetus to make a move as I am not canceling my membership regardless. I’ve decided to continue my support because I appreciate White’s dedication to offering his fans a truly unique experience. But be warned: this is not an audiophile’s arena. Buy at your own risk. Tragic, really.

A while back, I had it in my mind that Mobile Fidelity, while making some of the purist, quietest records in my collection, couldn’t quite cut the mustard on a full-on Rock and Roll release. I thought of their “sonic signature” as being too delicate and pristine for the gnarlier performances that rev my motor. There was still plenty within their catalog to recommend though. Plenty. Some of the cleaner Little Feat recordings, for instance. Certainly, their Marvin Gaye titles and Miles Davis reissues are right up there. They’d completely lost me with their take on REM’s Life’s Rich Pageant which is an under-the-radar scorcher from my youth. They just took all the fun right out of that one. All the sharpness and brilliant abrasiveness drained from the mix. Then, I began to explore their Allman Brothers titles. Nothing clean about those first couple of records. And MoFi’s versions are transcendent. My understanding is that the company’s sonic stamp has morphed and fluctuated wildly over the decades. Maybe they’ve hit a peak. Or maybe I’m just nuts. None of that matters though as it relates to the Allmans’ Brothers and Sisters. That recording is noticeably less edgy than its predecessors. I’d say that’s true of the sonics and the performances. And I knew that MoFi would do what was needed to unmask this record’s luster. And I was right.

This title was announced many months prior to its release, but MoFi doesn’t ever give you a solid date that I’m aware of. You just know, more or less, what’s coming down the pipeline, then they ambush you with it sometime down the road. The original recording of Brothers and Sisters, to me, suggests a room covered top to bottom in orange shag carpet. Somewhere in the early ’70’s, it seems that the music industry decided en mass that no ambient noise of any kind was going to make its way onto a record. That’s still the preferred method of recording most new music, but who the hell cares about most new music? The folks that know about the Soul within a performance are opening things up a bit. Recording live, in the same room, minimal overdubs, and all that good stuff. There are artists whose entire catalogs have been denigrated by poor recording techniques (none more so than Bruce Springsteen’s) so there are ample opportunities for a company like MoFi to swoop in like an avenging angel and clean some of this mess up. They did it for Elvis Costello’s first couple of records, and they’ve done it again for Brothers and Sisters. (It may be worth noting that this was the Brothers’ first major studio release that was not overseen by the great Tom Dowd. Instead, it was produced by Johnny Sandlin. He’s very well respected as a Southern Rocker and is, by all accounts, a swell guy. He’s produced my least favorite studio albums by some of my favorite bands.) But MoFi breathes some life back into that stuffy, shag infested room. They’ve opened it up, let the sun shine in, and clarified the whole picture. For a band that had endured the loss of its founder and main inspiration as well as its bassist within the span of about a year, Brothers and Sisters came out better than anyone would have had a right to expect. This is the sound of a band that was not just surviving in the face of extreme adversity; they were growing, even thriving. That wouldn’t last, but Brothers and Sisters is a document that will endure as a fine example of what a bunch of miscreants could do with their backs against a wall. I’d still take them in a fight against most any of the newer bands.

(This record was purchased at MusicDirect.com.)

It must have been a couple of years ago that I set out to cultivate a Grateful Dead vinyl collection consisting of records that I could sit back and enjoy – all the way through. That last part is key. I believe I started with Blues For Allah. Which went over like a rat in a punch bowl due to excessive noodling/wanking on Side Two. But I pulled it together and came away with some keepers, and now, dear reader, I can see the tie-dyed finishing ribbon from atop my VW van. I’m in possession of American Beauty as done by Mobile Fidelity, and I’ve got Working Man’s Dead in the queue. Both have been cut at 45 rpm and each title has been pressed on two discs. As with the aforementioned Allman Brothers record, I feel like these two recordings fit quite nicely within the MoFi framework. I was especially excited about Beauty as I have an original on hand for comparison. But, really, there is no comparison.

The first thing to know about American Beauty is that it is legendarily light on what the casual listener almost invariably thinks of when they think of the Grateful Dead. To wit, there is nary a Jerry Garcia guitar solo on this record anywhere at all. (The band brought in David Nelson to play a quick one on “Box of Rain.”) The tunes are breezy, American vignettes. Certainly not Country or Bluegrass, but definitely informed by both. They’re the sonic equivalent of lying in a sun swept poppy field while hippy girls fan you with palm fronds and feed you grapes. Or whatever blows your skirt up. Doesn’t have to be girls or grapes. But it does have to be hippies. I have a friend who shuns any reissues as he claims to want to hear what folks heard in the era when the records were originally released. Okay. But you’re not doing that anyway if you’re listening through new speakers or utilizing a modern player. And I’m firmly in the camp that wants to hear the best possible version available. I guess I’m after what the artist would have wanted us to hear if he/she had access to our technology during mastering and pressing. We know that vinyl carries more information now than it did then. We also know that some of the stereo mixes from the ’60’s and ’70’s are comically bad due to poor taste and hardware limitations. Finally, we know that the Dead were surprisingly fastidious about the quality of their sonics. I’m sure that the surviving members are thrilled with this version of what many consider to be their penultimate studio recording. Garcia’s “Candyman” intro is hard right on both the original and the reissue, but the acoustic guitar in the other channel is so much clearer and more detailed in the MoFi version that the panning seems less obvious. The organs and keyboards that replace the guitars in the second verse are much warmer than on the original while Garcia’s voice floats right out in the middle of it all like some sort of oracular soothsayer. I saw the Dead twice and left early both times. I saw the Jerry Garcia Band once and totally understood how an entire legion of freakers would drop everything and get on the bus. MoFi’s version of American Beauty (or American Reality if you look at the cover art just right) puts him right in your room. Palm fronds not included.

(This record was purchased at MusicDirect.com.)

I might not take the Drive-By Truckers in a fight against the Allman Brothers Band, they’d be outnumbered, but I still think they’re the finest American Rock Band burning up the highways in 2015. The Truckers do it the old fashioned way. One foot in the grave and one on a banana peel, wobbling along until some beautiful accident occurs. On Valentine’s weekend 2014 in the South, not many people were wobbling anywhere let alone burning up any highways. A quarter inch of snow had brought that entire quadrant to a thundering halt. But the Truckers had a room booked, and a show to play at the Fabulous 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia as part of their annual homecoming weekend. And those boys don’t cancel shows. Luckily for us, they documented a bit of it on Black Ice Verite which is technically bonus content to a larger “deluxe” release of last year’s English Oceans. At least that’s how I understand it. Let There Be Rock, indeed.

The Truckers have burned through some band members over the years, and they always patch up the holes with another batch of stellar players. You’d think that the well would run dry at some point, but I wouldn’t bet against them now. Personally, I think that Jay Gonzalez has had the biggest musical impact of all the members that aren’t named Patterson Hood or Mike Cooley, certainly in the last decade or so. Gonzalez seems to have brought a little more melody to the party. Some delicacy in a rugged landscape. Like plopping Jay Gatsby down into the middle of a Mad Max film. I’m a fool for an organ anyway and that guy can find his way around one just fine. But he can also play a guitar like his hair is on fire, and he’s done a lot of that since John Neff’s departure. It’s hard to tell who’s doing what on Verite (I haven’t looked at the included DVD yet) as it pertains to guitar playing, but that’s part of the great beauty behind it all. This band has some dynamics in its pocket now, and they know when to attack and when to release. (One of their former members, Rob Malone, once told me that he thought that tension and release was the basis for all good music. I reckon he’d know.) Three of the eight tracks on Verite are presented in an acoustic format and were performed and recorded as part of the band’s Bonnaroo goings on last year. The musicianship is amazing and I’m not entirely convinced that the band could have pulled these tunes off, let alone written them, when I first stumbled upon them playing in a pizza parlor parking lot circa 1999. Maybe I’m being presumptuous. Regardless, the band’s pulled off a dozen hairpin turns in the intervening years and they haven’t bucked me out of the saddle yet. And Black Ice Verite is a fine document of where the band was eleven months ago or so. Lord only knows what’s coming next.

This is a neat little package, gang. Don’t sleep on it if you’re a fan. Or if you’re thinking of joining the club. Download card included. Pressed nicely enough on white vinyl. Another bright star in the ever expanding DBT Universe. Hats off, boys. They recorded their shows at San Francisco’s Fillmore late last year for future release. This will hold us over until that one surfaces.

(This record was purchased at MusicDirect.com.)