Skip to main content

Type Slowly

It's not like it wasn't going to happen, but I wondered when this was coming out. Well, details on the double-disc reissue of Pavement's Brighten the Corners have finally surfaced. I'm glad that it's set to come out in a couple of months, and I don't mind essentially re-buying an album I already own.

Make no mistake, other than the Slanted and Enchanted reissue, the digital remastering was not why I got Matador's reissues. The extensive liner notes are nice, but the whopping amounts of extras have made every Pavement reissue worthwhile. Just having "Painted Soldiers" back on CD for the Wowee Zowee reissue was justifiable for me.

I must admit, I haven't gone through every single reissue track by track, but it's nice to have way more material to sort through. Heck, I'm excited just to finally hear "Westie Can Drum," a song I read about in Rolling Stone while they were making the album, and I think the song was called "Westy Can't Drum." (Yes, I know the song was released as a B-side, but I never got to dig very deep into the band's B-sides when they were back together.)

This is the way remaster/reissues should be done: take the time to release a lot of good extras instead of re-releasing an album a year after it first came out and tacking on some fluffy extras.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's a Long Way Down

There was a time when I listened to Ryan Adams' music practically all the time. Back in 2001, as I finished college and tried to navigate post-college life, the double dose of Whiskeytown’s Pneumonia and Adams’ Gold led me to everything else he had made before. It was countrified rock music that spoke to me in a deep way, mainly on the musical front. I don’t tend to really pay attention to lyrics, but I connected with Adams’ lyrics about being young and perpetually heartbroken. I thought some self-inflicted mental pain about awkward and failed attempts at relationships put me in the headspace to relate to songs by Adams, as well as Bright Eyes. There was so much time and energy spent on anger and sadness directed at myself for things not working out, so I found solace in songs like “Harder Now That It’s Over” and “The Rescue Blues.” As it turned out, there was a pattern in my life: if I had a little taste of a feeling of sadness or anger, I could relate to those who had it
Post a Comment
Read more

I ain't got no crystal ball

I've never been a big fan of Sublime's reggae-punk-ska, but I feel bad for their hardcore fans. Billboard reports that a four-disc box set featuring previously released and unreleased material is on the way. How is this a bad thing? Well, the number of posthumous vault-raiding collections greatly outnumber the band's proper releases. That usually isn't a problem, but the quality of them is very suspect. When they were together, the band recorded three proper albums, Robbin' the Hood , 40 Oz. to Freedom and Sublime . Sublime would be the band's breakthrough record with the mainstream, but that success was very bittersweet. Shortly before its release, frontman/guitarist/songwriter Bradley Nowell died of a heroin overdose. In the following years, the effects of apparently a bad record deal have yielded compilation after compilation. Here's the rundown so far: Second Hand Smoke (1997) Stand By Your Van -- Sublime Live in Concert (1998) Sublime Acoustic: Br
1 comment
Read more

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J
Post a Comment
Read more