News

偏執症者 (Paranoid): S.C.U.M. 12" (Beach Impediment Records) The latest 12” EP from Swedish d-beat veterans 偏執症者 (Paranoid) signals a significant shake-up in their sound. In many ways, though, it extends what 偏執症者 (Paranoid) has been up to for the past several years, continuing to widen their music’s scope, which takes in d-beat, noise, heavy metal, black metal, Japanese hardcore, and plenty more. It’s hard to deny, though, that S.C.U.M. includes more raw, straightforward hardcore in the mixture than the past few records. 偏執症者 (Paranoid) sounds aggressive as fuck here, playing hard and fast and generating fucked-up tones that, like the best noise-punk, push past grating into the terrifyingly sublime. S.C.U.M. is hardly a back-to-basics record, though, as the sonic hallmarks of their past several records are all over this new EP, which has plenty of rocked-out riffs, soaring melodic lead guitar, and ambitious song structures… they’re just served on a plate of sandpaper. I’m sure plenty of people will say S.C.U.M. is the best record 偏執症者 (Paranoid) has made in years, and if you’ve lost touch with them over the past few albums, it’s time to check back in. And if you’ve been along for the entire ride, you’ll love how S.C.U.M. synthesizes sounds from across the band’s ever-growing discography.

What’s up Sorry State readers, I hope everyone has been enjoying the first week of fall. Here in Raleigh, it’s IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Awards) week, so there’s a ton of great (and free) pickin going on all over the city. It’s an awesome event and I’m hoping to make it over to a few shows over the course of it. Last night I was able to catch a show at the Pour House and saw this 13-year-old kid named Wyatt Ellis absolutely shred on the mandolin. This is the second time I’ve seen him perform. When I went to the Billy Strings show in Winston Salem this past March, Billy brought him out as a special guest and played a couple songs with him. He’s definitely the real deal and played the hell out of some Bill Monroe songs last night. I figured this would be a good week to write about a bluegrass record (even though it’s always a good week to do that). What better to write about with a bunch of live music going all around town this week than a live album recorded by two bluegrass legends, Flatt and Scruggs At Carnegie Hall, recorded in the fall of 1962 at the peak of the folk music revival. It’s a great show, and it starts off with a favorite of mine, Salty Dog Blues, followed by a ripping fiddle tune, Durham’s Reel. Me and Dom always talk about how we enjoy the banter and jokes and everything going on between the songs on these live bluegrass albums. It’s what separates a great show from a good show to me. Especially back then, having a funny and charismatic personality was almost as important as the music as far as a performance is concerned. I like the track Mama Blues on here, where Earl Scruggs is having a conversation with his guitar about it missing its mama. It’s a fun track on here and is exactly what I was just writing about. I love bluegrass but more specifically, I love live bluegrass. Even though by the time this comes out the festival will be over, I hope if you’re in Raleigh you got to make it so some of the shows going on for IBMA.

Hi Sorry State readers! How’s everybody doing? Good, good. We’ve got some cool shows this week in Raleigh. Poison Ruin is playing tonight, but I will probably have to miss it, which sucks because I really like them. I just didn’t realize it was happening tonight until about an hour ago. The end of September has come so fast! We are just getting warmed up for Sorry State Fest quickly approaching! I know the whole thing will be a blast, but the lineups for the main shows on Friday and Saturday are insane. I hope to see you there!

Ok let’s keep talking about music. My pick for this week is Heavenly Blue’s S/T EP brought to us by Sewercide Records. These guys are a Canadian band and feature some of the members of the Booji Boys. I kinda had a hunch I’d like it, but I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I do. It’s a mix of raw 60s garage and the specific kind of 70s rock enjoyed by guys who rev their engines. It’s pleasantly abrasive. The growly, commanding vocals give it a more hard driving, punkier sound. It’s melodic but somewhat aggressive, and approaching weirdo rock territory. Very fuzzed out and guitar driven, with a sprinkling of psychedelic sounds. It sounds less retro than I thought it would, but there is a surfer-rock vibe going on in the opening track called Push on Through.

When I listen to more contemporary sounding garage rock bands, a lot of times the vocals sound like they are recorded in a tunnel or far away from the rest of the band. Heavenly Blue couldn’t sound further from this. The vocals are very in your face and out in front. I like that. I’m big on vocals. If the vocals don’t sound like an actual instrument, then it doesn’t excite me. Needless to say, these vocals do excite me. I went back and listened to their 2021 cassette, which I believe is also S/T, and they’ve come a long way in terms of production. I guess that tends to happen over time, though. But I noticed they also just tightened things up song-wise. This EP sounds more structured and accessible while still sounding rough and unruly. Best of both worlds. All four tracks are high energy, mid-tempo, and average about 2 minutes a song. While it’s a tad short for an EP, it’s a satisfying listen. My favorite track is Drifter, which is very riff-driven and melodic. It’s the one song that almost tips the scales at three minutes. The rhythm section does a killer job in the closing track, Zap the World, particularly the infectious bass line. As an aside, I must say that I really like the simple packaging with the brown paper bag looking sleeve complimented by the retro looking blue labels. This is a limited run of 300 copies, so don’t sleep on this one! Thanks so much for reading! Until next time..

Thanks,

Angela

Hello and thanks for reading. I missed last week cos I was away from work celebrating my partner’s birthday. I don’t like to talk about personal stuff often, but I can’t use words to express how much I love my partner. I feel unbelievably lucky to have spent so many years with such a loving, patient, supportive, and beautiful person. OK anyway... there are a lot of cool new releases and great reissues in stock, but today I have chosen to write about YELLOWCAKE. This is one of those records where I have been awaiting its final release date. I even mail ordered a limited copy direct from the label. I can’t remember how this band initially got on my radar, but I was hooked after only a few seconds of the first song I heard. While we don’t really sound similar, some elements of this band actually remind me of SCARECROW. The drummer of this band is also in this band SYCOPHANT, who I also think is outstanding. I am pretty sure Sorry State will eventually release a follow up to that record. The song writing on that one is just like, insane. These bands are based in Arizona, but a little while back the drummer was on the East Coast doing URCHIN and EXTENDED HELL. Knowing that, it’s kind of a no-brainer that I would like this record, haha. I thought the name YELLOWCAKE was a bit cheesy at first, but naturally I wanted to see if had a meaning deeper than a dessert. And ah yes, the word is associated with nuclear power. It is a yellow, powdery substance that comes from processing uranium after it’s been mined. It is then used to prepare the fuel for the nuclear reactors. After learning this, the name went from cheesy to clever in my mind. I think there is a fine line between cheesy and clever at times. It’s also not easy to sound original when playing a pretty straight forward style of music that is now 43 years old, so I try my best to never judge a book by the cover when it comes to hardcore records. I don’t want to say they are a DISCHARGE clone, but YELLOWCAKE is obviously under the influence of DISCHARGE. They sound like maybe there is some Swedish stuff happening, but I can’t quite place what I hear at the moment. I think the Swedish edge is why it reminds me a bit of SCARECROW. The guitarist played with a full stack live. That was pretty sick. If you don’t have the riffs to back up a rig that size, I think it’s a bit whack, but trust me the man has got riffs. Their drummer is phenomenal, so the combination is killer. Unfortunately, I was working the door at the gig, so I did not get the full effect of their live performance, but I was still happy to witness them. Alright, that seems like about it for today, check this record out! Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone for the support.

What’s up Sorry Staters?

Sorry to all you readers that I skipped writing one of these last week. I usually try to bust some writing out on Thursday morning before the weekend and prior to Daniel sending out the newsletter on Monday. I remember showing up to the store last week and just feeling too busy and too overwhelmed to write anything down. But I’m back baby!

I’m sure you all have been noticing our updates about Sorry State’s 10th anniversary weekend. As I’m writing this, this coming weekend is the last few days of September, which means the fest is only 3 weeks away? Aaaagggh crazy! Make sure you get your tickets NOW. I think weekend passes are almost sold out. It’s gonna be wild. Can’t wait to see everybody and RAGE like barnyard animals.

Speaking of the Anniversary Weekend, one aspect that I’m not sure if I drilled into everyone’s brains properly so far is that we are planning on doing a HUGE drop of used records during that weekend. Lots of rare and original punk and hardcore. A few of these records we acquired years ago, and we’ve had them set aside in anticipation for the big event. But just the other day, we bought a collection from this local dude who had a bunch of cool punk stuff. In his collection, he mostly had a bunch of 80s UK punk stuff, like some Oi! and stuff on No Future. But he also had a bunch of classic LA punk stuff, most notably stuff on Posh Boy.

For whatever reason, as I was pricing this dude’s records, I was digging through his boxes and decided to throw on one of those Rodney On The ROQ compilations. I had never really checked out these comps too in depth before. But in this box, he had ROTR volumes 1, 2, and 3, and I was surprised at how captivating I found them and how much I enjoyed listening to these records. I sat there and listened to all 3 records all the way through. Rodney Bingenheimer seems to be a rather eccentric character. I know that in Los Angeles he was quite the socialite. And because of that, I guess I always associate him with sort of more the 70s glam era, when all the cool celebrities bedazzled in glitter and feathered boas would be binging blow all night at night clubs on the Sunset Strip. So the fact that Rodney was a huge factor in ushering in and championing the emerging LA punk and hardcore scene is so puzzling and interesting to me. On his radio show, Rodney’s personality seemed so gentle and mild-mannered. I’m sure for him to have the Germs on the air was pretty terrifying haha. But hey, he made it happen!

What’s so cool about these comps is that they feel like a real snapshot of what was going on in the LA music scene in general. These compilations were released on the Posh Boy label in conjunction with Flipside Magazine. Each record comes with a fanzine that’s basically like a truncated version of an issue of Flipside and contains interviews and information for each band featured on the comp. With each Rodney On The ROQ compilation, I’m pretty sure Rodney was heavily involved with the curation of songs and liner notes. The format and sequencing of all the bands has a pattern that must be totally intentional. Side A is always loaded with killer early 80s LA hardcore bands like Black Flag, Agent Orange, Adolescents, Shattered Faith, etc. Then the B-side on each volume is much more new wavey stuff and silly novelty songs. Like Volume 2 has the classic new wave hit by Gleaming Spires, “Are You Ready for The Sex Girls?” Which, when this song came on, I just giggled because I remembered first hearing that song on soundtracks for movies like Revenge of The Nerds and stuff like that. Both the 2nd and 3rd edition’s B-sides are front-loaded with tracks by the band Unit 3 With Venus, a new wave band with a pre-teenage girl lead singer. Clearly, this band must have been one of Rodney’s favorites. I mean “Pajama Party” is a rager, for sure. The juxtaposition between the A-side and the B-side makes for a really fun listen. You get all worked up raging to Channel 3 and Ill Repute, and then flip the record over and cool down with some David Hines doing “Land of 1,000 Dances.”

For all the lighthearted innocence perceived from these comps, there is also an underlying element of kinda greasy sexuality. I mean, each record basically has pinup style 60s beehive schoolgirls lookin’ saucy while jamming the hot new tunes. I’m sure it’s all in good fun, just a bit cheeky. One really cool thing I was trippin’ on when reading the fanzines is the interaction between the new wave bands and the hardcore bands. The Bangles are featured on Volume 3, and in the interview, Rodney asks them if they were scared of the “hardcores” being mean. I guess he was referring to a show where The Bangles opened up for Social Distortion. Susanna Hoffs says something like, “We were really nervous they were gonna spit on us, but they were really nice! The guys from Wasted Youth were like tugging on my dress and were drooling over Debbie’s skin-tight pants, but they seemed really cool.” Horny hardcore boys, what can I tell ya?

Welp, I’ll leave ya with that haha. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Phew: S/T 12” (1981, Pass Records / 2021, P-Vine Records)

Newsletter readers and Japanese punk aficionados already know the 1979 album by Aunt Sally; I chose the Aunt Sally album as my staff pick in February 2022, and once we stocked copies of Mesh Key’s domestic reissue of that album at Sorry State, I wrote about it again as a featured release. Phew was Aunt Sally’s singer, and her first solo album from 1981 picks up the Aunt Sally story where we left off.

To get you back up to speed, here’s a quick refresher on Phew’s impossibly cool backstory. Intrigued by what she read about the Sex Pistols in the music press, she traveled to London in 1977 to see the band live. Inspired, she returned to Osaka, Japan, and started what must have been one of the first punk-influenced bands in Japan. However, like the first generation of post-Pistols bands in the UK, Aunt Sally didn’t imitate the Pistols but expanded on their sound, resulting in an album that sounds a lot more like post-punk.

After the Aunt Sally project ran out of steam, Phew began working under her own (stage) name, signing to Pass Records and recording her debut single with Ryuichi Sakamoto of Yellow Magic Orchestra. I hadn’t heard that single before I started researching this piece, but it was an immediate “add to wantlist.” Rich, dense, and experimental, it expands on the more interesting experimental aspects of the Aunt Sally album and sets the stage for the album I’m writing about today. Hopefully I can pick up a physical copy at some point and write about it in more detail for a future staff pick.

So this brings us to Phew. How do you follow up a first act as incredible as the Aunt Sally album? Flying to Germany and recording with famed producer Conny Plank and having Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay of Can play on your album is a pretty good start. I’ve looked for information about how this group of musicians came together, but I haven’t turned up much in English. It just seems amazing to me. Even listening to both the Sex Pistols and Can circa 1980 was a notable achievement in coolness, but how did these musicians come to work together? I would love to know if anyone can offer more insight.

Circa 1981, Can was in a state of inactivity, the creative spark behind the project having largely gone out for their last few (mediocre) albums of the 1970s. Thus, it’s surprising they play with so much fire on Phew. Admittedly, though, if Jaki Liebezeit is playing drums on your album, it’s going to sound good, and he sounds great here. He’s one of those musicians who, if I see their name on a release, I am automatically interested, and his trademark style is on full display here. The album doesn’t list who played which instruments, but the rest of the sounds are full of rich, exciting textures, rhythms, and melodies. It’s tough to tell how they’re making these sounds, but there are synthesizers in play and perhaps some electronically treated sounds created from other (perhaps unconventional?) sources, which was consistent with Czukay’s m.o. at the time. This isn’t just soundscapes, though. Liebezeit’s drums always hold a steady groove, and Plank’s production is heavy to the point of being dub-ish, giving the tracks significant heft. That combination of deep grooves, dub heaviness, and bold experimentation resembles the first couple Public Image Ltd albums, and if you’re a fan of those, this is well worth checking out.

There isn’t a track on Phew that I skip, but I think it has a particularly strong ending. The third from the last song, “P-Adic,” is the most aggressive on the album, an uptempo synth-punk tune with driving drums and stabbing sequencer rhythms that recall Neu Deutsche Welle groups like D.A.F. If you liked the recent Die Letzten Ecken album we raved about earlier this year, this might be your favorite track on Phew. They follow that with “Doze,” a moody, atmospheric track with an eerie synth melody that might make you think of John Carpenter’s film music. The album then closes with “Circuit,” a short and futuristic, new age-ish instrumental that could have fit on an After Dinner or Kate Bush album.

If you’re intrigued, it shouldn’t be too difficult to lay your hands on a copy of Phew. The original pressing isn’t insanely expensive… you can get a copy in your hands for under a hundred dollars, though you’ll probably have to get it from Japan. This reissue on P-Vine Records seems to have gotten worldwide distribution, but like most of P-Vine’s releases, its price is steep, usually in the $40-$50 range. However, if you’re willing to plonk that down (I think Phewis worth every penny), you shouldn’t have too much trouble locating a copy from a seller in your country.

Avskum: En Annan Värld Är Möjlig 12” (Prank Records) The world may be objectively worse than it was 20 years ago, but on the plus side at least Prank Records is still putting out new Avskum albums. I fucking love Avskum. It’s a pretty incredible achievement for a band that has been around for as long as they have, but I like each of their albums a little more than the previous one (comparing their albums to their earlier EPs and demos is kind of apples and oranges… I’m on the side of “it’s all awesome”). While En Annan Värld Är Möjlig is still sinking in, I think the trend might continue. This album has everything I love about Avskum. It’s fucking relentless in that Swedish käng style that just never lets up, with everything at maximum intensity all the time. The vocals are perfectly shredded and perfectly placed, and the guitarist just assaults you with riffs. I’ve always loved Avskum’s guitar style, which is full of dense, dark chords, drawing on an aspect of Bones’ style that few other guitarists pick up on. En Annan Värld Är Möjlig is full of all that stuff (I mean really full… it’s 17 tracks!) and not much else, so if this is the shit that cracks your brain up, don’t miss it.

What’s up Sorry State readers, I hope everyone is having a nice week. We’ve had some great weather here in Raleigh and it’s kinda been feeling like fall a little bit. Especially in the morning, with that nice, crisp air. Of course, we’ll probably be hit with another heatwave here soon before fall really rolls around. Here at Sorry State, Dominic has set off for a month-long visit to his home across the pond in England. I’m happy my buddy gets to go home and visit his family and friends, but I’ll miss having him around for our shifts together at the store so he can show me my new favorite album or cut up to some bluegrass records. He’s left me with enough great music to listen to tho in his absence, including this Lush album, Spooky. I honestly had never heard of Lush till the other week when we got in a few of their albums at the store. Dominic saw them and was like, “oh shit” and told me about them and that I’d probably like them a lot. Of course he was right. I think we ended up listening to all three that had come in and I was introduced to the serenading sounds of Lush. I really enjoyed all of them, but out of the bunch I’d have to say my favorite was Spooky, their 1992 album. The whole album just flows so nicely, some of the vocals on here kinda remind me of Julee Cruise too on some of the slower songs. My favorite two tracks on here are Tiny Smiles and Laura, the latter which has this part in the middle of the song that just sounds so fuckin cool. I guess it’s an effect on the guitar or something, but it sounds like an underwater UFO. If you listen to the song, I feel like it’s pretty clear what part I’m talking about despite my lack of accurate description. Without fail, each time I play this record in the shop someone always asks “who is this?” which I usually see as the mark of a good record. Get some luscious Lush in your life today.

Hi Sorry State readers! Hope everyone is having a nice start to the fall or whatever season you are experiencing. We’ve had some lovely evenings. Around late September is when we begin our summer by day and fall by night period. I will take it. Anyway, nothing too exciting on my end. Just getting hyped to see some cool shows over the next couple months. Especially the Sorry State 10 year anniversary fest! It’s gonna be so sick. Try to make it if you can. So many bands for a pretty good deal! And other fun things sprinkled in over that weekend. It obviously wouldn’t be a proper Sorry State celebration without an extra sick used records drop. That’s what attracted me to the store and what kept me coming back again and again and again. I’m sure it’s the same for a lot of you locals!

I feel like I’m kind of cheating with my staff pick today. It’s the Yambag cassette: Mr. Ed. is Dead Again. It includes Yambag’s debut LP Posthumous Pounce and their Strength in Nightmares EP. I feel like I’m taking a shortcut because I wrote about the latter EP in a staff pick sometime last year. Wait, no, make that twice! Uh-oh. I also included it in my end of the year wrap up this year as one of my top ten releases of the year. It was actually in my top two or three favorite releases of 2022! At the time I am writing this we still have a few in stock, but my apologies if it is sold out when this goes up. I hate when I do that, or when someone does that to me. The nerve! The good news is that we should still have some of the second pressing of Strength in Nightmares available on red vinyl (Note from Daniel: JK, we’re sold out of that one! Sorry!). And it’s a really good red. So you could still acquire half of the contents of this tape. I was introduced to Yambag through that record and then I went back and to listened to Posthumous Pounce. I was not disappointed. This tape should not to be confused with Mr. Ed. is Dead, which is from 2018 and includes some tracks from their LP, but it’s a pretty raw recording. I don’t think it was ever put out on physical media.

Anyway, I guess Mr. Ed. died again, and that’s how we got here. Quickly, the band hails from Cleveland. While Cleveland hardcore is known for a particular type of intensity and angst, I think Yambag brings a little something different. It’s not as metallic as Cleveland predecessors like Integrity or Ringworm. It’s still intense and aggressive, but it’s more manic. It’s also just faster. The drums are super speedy and powerful, but they do weirder stuff with their guitars, and the vocals are more fun. I don’t want to say the word sloppy because the vocals are not sloppy at all. More like purposefully snotty. They say “blech” here and there and that really adds something to the sound. It’s very Cleveland to be disgusted by something and to communicate that. I love looser spastic vocals paired with very tight instrumentation. All in all, I love the speedy drums, the stop and starts (for a lack of proper terminology), the unanticipated bass melodies, and the brief tempo changes that provide some good mosh-worthy moments. If you want a track that does all of those things with a killer breakdown, Lowlife on Strength in Nightmares is the one. I believe it’s a cover song.

Posthumous Pounce is Yambag’s full-length record (2020) with 16 in your face, fast as hell tracks that are aggressive and antagonistic but again, fun. Along with all the tough-sounding adjectives, the music and manic and explosive. The songs Dog and (O)possum are my favorites on that one. Every track on the LP is actually named after an animal, and I guess the plan was for the singer to wear a mask of the appropriate animal for each track, but it was just too much damn work. You can imagine. After hearing the record, you know they don’t need extra theatrics because the songs stand alone quite strongly on their own. Cleveland hardcore is known for having a serious type of intensity to it, and I like that Yambag doesn’t seem to take themselves too seriously. And that their musicianship is still fantastic. Looking back, I think their first record laid the perfect foundation for Strength in Nightmares (2022). The newer release stays the course but with better production. The drums are fast and furious, but I don’t think Posthumous Pounce does them the justice that way that Strength in Nightmares does. The recording just wasn’t as good. What’s funny is there is a quote on the Posthumous Pounce side of the tape taken from MRR’s review and it reads: “They are kinda recorded like shit in the most endearing way.”

Strength in Nightmares really sealed the deal on their fastcore classification, but I really like both releases, so it’s super cool to have them on one tape. It also sounds fairly cohesive for being two different records on one tape. Anyway, Yambag quickly became one of my favorite hardcore bands and I can’t wait to hear more from them in the future!

Thank you for reading! Until we meet again.

Thanks,

Angela

I’ve had the Replacements on my brain for the past couple days thanks to that new Let It Bleed edition of Tim. I heard about the release ahead of time, but didn’t know much about it. I didn’t even order any copies for the store. Box sets are a tough sell for a store like ours… my theory is that if you’re spending $100+ on something like that, you’re probably going to shop around for the best deal, and thanks to the way the major label distribution network works, Sorry State is never going to be your best deal on a major label box set. However, the release came up on Friday’s episode of What Are You Listening To? when Sorry State’s own Eric Chubb chose the Replacements’ All Shook Down as one of his picks. The panelists had favorable things to say about it, then the next day I came across Pitchfork’s review. Not only did that review better explain what was on the release than anywhere else, but it was over the top in its praise, giving the reissue a perfect score (something they rarely do at Pitchfork) and claiming that the new Ed Stasium mix of Tim bumped it up to being the best Replacements album. Color me intrigued.

I had some time Saturday evening, so I dipped into the reissue digitally, but before I get into that, I should give you some background on my relationship to the Replacements so you know where I’m coming from. I went through a period in my early 20s (which would have been around the turn of the millennium) when I liked the Replacements a lot, but I confined my attention mostly to the Twin/Tone albums. Let It Be and Stink were my go-to’s. I had assumed, as one did in those days, that the Replacements’ major label years were uninteresting, so when I heard the best of compilation Don’t You Know Who I Think I Was?, later tracks like “Bastards of Young” and “Alex Chilton” knocked me on my ass. I played that best-of to death, and while I still prefer the loose and punky delivery of the band’s early catalog, it’s hard to deny Paul Westerberg matured as a songwriter and that the later albums contained his best work. I still haven’t spent much time with Don’t Tell a Soul and All Shook Down as at some point I just stopped listening to the Replacements, but I spent a good amount of time with Tim and Pleased to Meet Me and learned to like those albums too.

Now, back to this new Let It Bleed edition of Tim. I dialed it up on Apple Music, and when “Hold My Life” started, it took me aback. This really sounds different from the version of Tim we all knew (and many of us loved)! Before listening to this new version, I doubt I would have described Tim’s sound as cool and distant, but Ed Stasium’s new mix makes it feel like they’re playing right in front of your face, even inside your skull. The drums sound more driving (the original version, like so many records from the 80s, had reverb on the drums, while this version’s drums sound super dry) and the bass has a rich, lush bottom end that sounds modern and hi-fi. The focal points of the mix, though, are Westerberg’s vocals and rhythm guitar. The sculpted tones of every instrument and the strong separation between them mean you can turn your attention toward what any player is doing, but the lead vocals and rhythm guitars are un-ignorable.

The new mix changes my sense of perspective as a listener. It makes the sound so much more intimate, like Westerberg is singing and playing directly into my ear. There was always something detached and cooler-than-thou about the Replacements, and while that may have been one of their many achilles heels as far as appealing to a wider audience, it’s a huge part of their charm for people who like them. That sense is gone from this new mix. It’s like the band is trying… you can hear the effort and the feeling in Westerberg’s voice, and you can hear how much technicality was in the rest of the band’s playing, too. It’s great in some respects, but it feels kind of wrong to me.

Aside from the general sound of the mix, I have a few other nits to pick too. The Pitchfork review gushes about how “Little Mascara” extends for a full extra minute, making room for a Bob Stinson guitar solo on the outro that was trimmed from the final version of Tim. Tim is the last Replacements record Bob played on, though he only lent leads to a handful of tracks. The thing is, though, I don’t think his leads on the album are that good. I love his playing on the earlier albums, but they sound out of sync with the songs on Tim, lacking the sense of reckless abandon that made his earlier leads so great… he’s clearly aiming for a more precise playing style here, and that along with the harsher glare of the clearer studio production highlights their awkwardness. Aside from laying Bob’s faults more bare, I think Ed Stasium’s mix also loses some of the original’s dynamics. All of it sounds the same, and it makes me appreciate how the original mix had more of a sense of ebb and flow.

Pitchfork’s review also points out the version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” on this collection (an updated version of the previously released “Tim version” of that song, whose supposedly canonical version appeared on Pleased to Meet Me), saying it’s the single that would / should have been a hit and made the Replacements cross over to a mainstream audience. I don’t hear it, though. That version has all the pluses and minuses of the rest of Ed Stasium’s remixes, and it’s hard to imagine this super dry recording penetrating mainstream radio playlists in 1985. If there were some alternate universe where it got released in 1992 or 93, when recordings were sounding a lot more like this mix, perhaps something like that might have happened.

All that being said, some songs really benefit from this approach. “Little Mascara” sticks out for me in a way it didn’t before, and the more rocking tracks like “Dose of Thunder” and “Lay it Down Clown” get a boost from the beefier sound, channeling as they do the big gestures of classic rock. When I listen to a track like “Hold My Life,” though, I’m so transfixed by the drums, which never waver in their rhythm or dynamics, that it draws my attention away from the song’s emotional dynamics. Maybe it’s just that the new mix is more jarring on the tracks I’ve listened to more, and that effect will fade with time. It’s hard to say. It’s like watching an old movie remastered in high definition. It’s great to see and hear all kinds of new details in the background, but noticing those details pulls your attention away from what made you love it in the first place. It’s a double-edged sword.

The next time I want to hear Tim, I wonder whether I’ll go to the original version or this new mix. I honestly don’t know. There’s no telling what’s on the other side of this acclimation period, but if nothing else I’m impressed with how completely Stasium could reimagine this album. It appears these expanded reissues of the Replacements catalog are working their way through the band’s discography in reverse chronological order, so I’m curious to see if they do something with the Twin/Tone albums next.