Dylan, Beatles Sets Top Week’s New Releases
Bob Dylan: The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 (Columbia/Legacy) It’s true: This is about as good an album reissue project as there might ever be. Its central focus is Bob Dylan, one of the most celebrated and talented figures in 20th century popular music. It focuses on that one sliver of his distinguished, lengthy career that many regard as his absolute best—the 14-month span in 1965-66 during which he recorded his classic albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde. And it is available in several configurations, precisely calculated to appeal to the curious consumer on every level: 1) a 2-CD compilation entitled The Best Of The Cutting Edge, 2) the luxurious, bountiful, 6-CD Cutting Edge package itself, and 3) a glorious excessive, limited edition 18-CD “Collector’s Edition” featuring every note recorded during those many months of sessions. Most significantly, the focus here is on music taken from those sessions that has (largely) never before been released. And while many of the songs themselves will be extremely familiar to music fans of a certain age—“Like A Rolling Stone,” “Just Like A Woman,” “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Highway 61 Revisited” are here, to name a few—the sequencing of the songs, the various takes and re-takes of well-known songs, the lyrics attempted and ultimately discarded, the performances sped up and slowed down, electrified, played in solo acoustic format, then electrified once more…is absolutely fascinating. “Revelatory” is the word most critics will likely be using, and for once it applies. These songs have been so seared into pop culture’s collective consciousness, that even the slightest variation from the classic takes is instantly jarring. And there is a peculiar, voyeuristic thrill in hearing Dylan sharpen up not just the musical arrangements but his renowned lyrics with each new take. During the course of five takes of “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again,” he moves from singing “stuck inside of Mobile with the Nashville blues again” to “the Memphis blues again” then back again, then, on one take, mispronouncing “mobile” as “Nobile,” perhaps focusing on whether he should sing Memphis or Nashville a few beats later. Maybe not, but that a listener might have the occasion to actually think that’s what happened—that’s the real story here. It’s a fascinating glimpse inside, and nearly every note is historically relevant and culturally fascinating. There are one or two deliberately excessive moments on the 6-CD set that one might expect on the jumbo set—such as the four “isolated track” versions of “Like A Rolling Stone,” featuring the guitar/drums & organ/vocal & guitar/piano and bass tracks all on their own—but they work in this context because if there were ever one track the world knows measure for measure, it might be that one, and in this one instance, hearing each track consecutively is like watching a house being built brick by brick. Including it was a wise choice. Between the legendary musicians at work here—producers Tom Wilson and Bob Johnston and players including the likes of Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Harvey Brooks, the future Band, and the entire (still underrated) Blonde On Blonde Nashville crew—and the spectacular songs, played, replayed, then eventually chiseled to the perfection we now know, this is one of the most memorable looks behind the curtain we as music fans have ever been allowed. It, like the music with, appears to have been created with absolute love–and not cynicism, or crass commercialism, or corporate need or greed. There’s nothing but good stuff here. And lots of it. Immerse yourself further here.
The Beatles: 1+ (Apple/Capitol) As writer Mark Ellen notes in his appreciation within this new Beatles collection, because the Beatles broke up in 1970, “our mental image of them has never aged, frozen forever in sound and vision, a shorthand for eternal youth.” This eye-opening set makes that fairly official: Between the familiar hit songs that populate the newly reissued 1 CD—all their No. 1 hits together—and the flood of restored, often spectacular videos present in this 1+ combination set (CD/2 DVD or CD/2 Blu-ray), there is no longer any need to explain to future generations what made the Beatles so special. Just give them this, and hope compatible playback hardware still exists. While by definition the most popular music ever by the Beatles will be familiar to most users, there are new stereo mixes to be had here (by Giles Martin and Sam Okell) that are fascinating to those prone to memorizing every Beatle note—the mix has shifted, instruments in the center have moved within the soundstage, vocal choruses once barely audible are now slightly boosted, and the end result is an interesting blend of familiarity and…newness. But the major appeal here—as if the Beatles’ songs themselves aren’t enough—are the accompanying videos, of which there are 50, drawn from television appearances, promotional videos and such, and they are stunning. Technically so—they have been skillfully restored and, considering their age, look almost freakishly contemporary—but more interestingly, emotionally so. Meaning that the sense of fun, the good-natured aspect of the band’s camaraderie as we’d been led to understand it via their movies and the media, leaps right at you, frame after frame, while you watch. It is more than a nostalgia trip–there is a sense of wonder, of fun, of non-jaded, non-commercial, pushing at boundaries and having a good time all the while, that has never been duplicated and likely never will be.
[Related: Video Premiere: See The Beatles ‘Work it Out’ in Restored Film]
The Velvet Underground: Loaded: Reloaded 45th Anniversary Edition (Rhino) If we’re talking about revamped classics, now’s the time to bring up this very welcome deluxed-up version of the Velvet Underground’s 1970 set—originally released on Cotillion Records and long perceived as the most commercial record of their career. Containing both “Sweet Jane” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll”—the two songs that were probably most responsible for introducing the VU name to the general public, via scattered FM radio play and later popular cover versions of each song by Mott The Hoople and Mitch Ryder’s Detroit. But that was when bandleader Lou Reed was off on his own, reinventing himself via a dazzling string of albums like Transformer and Berlin and being praised (and produced) by up-and-coming superstar David Bowie. Loaded comes just before that–and unlike those Reed solo albums, it seems very much a conclusion rather than a new beginning. I like it just fine, and always have, and I’ve never been averse to the shadings that John Cale-replacement Doug Yule brought to the band’s final two albums (let alone the completely Reedless Squeeze album of 1973, which with “Friends” bears a track equal to many of the “real” Velvets’ best). Yule is all over Loaded—his brother Billy plays the drums as well—but then Reed is too, and divorced from the backstory, the music here is completely satisfying, if not deeply so. I highly recommend Rhino’s 6-disc deluxe version, as it’s got nearly everything you’d want (original remastered album, promo mono version, unreleased demos and early mixes) and things you might not expect, including a remastered version Live At Max’s Kansas City, an unissued 1970 live set recorded in Philadelphia, and an audio DVD bearing a high-def 5.1 surround sound remix, a stereo downmix of that, and the album’s original stereo mix in 96/24 high resolution audio. Yes it all sounds good, yes you’ll hear things you haven’t heard before, and yes, this is the sort of well annotated, well compiled project that becomes the definitive version of Loaded than any Velvets fan would want to own and perhaps eventually will.
Van Morrison: Astral Weeks (Expanded & Remastered), His Band And The Street Choir (Expanded & Remastered) (Rhino) If you’re getting the sense that everything old is new again, you are entirely correct: Here are two excellent classics from Van Morrison, 1968’s Astral Weeks and 1970’s Street Choir, each remastered and each to some extent plumped up with unreleased tracks. Missing in the sequence here is 1970’s Moondance, which was fabulously reissued in deluxe 5-disc form in 2013—and while as single discs neither of these new reissues contain anywhere that amount of extra material, there’s much to like here. Astral Weeks is simply Morrison’s all-time best album—up there with Pet Sounds, Forever Changes and few others—so it’s good to see some discipline was applied in its reissue: There are only four additional tracks (retakes or extended versions of “Beside You,” “Madame George,” Ballerina” and “Slim Slow Slider”), and each of them is well worth hearing more than once. Street Choir—at the time of its initial release, less satisfying than the three Morrison albums preceding it—now sounds comfortable, funky, chugworthy and hot, now with five additional tracks and all of them, especially “I’ve Been Working,” fascinating. As remasters, the original albums themselves sound excellent; you may especially be impressed by the work done on Street Choir, which to my ears always had a compressed, under-powered feel, but here especially shines. These are both wonderful records, and if you don’t yet own a copy of Astral Weeks in particular, there could be no better time.
Momus: Circus Maximus (Manufactured Recordings) Difficult as it is to believe, this is the very first domestic appearance of the 1986 debut album by Momus on these shores. It’s hard to believe for many reasons–among them 1) that it quietly and spectacularly good, filled with intelligent, humorous and highly memorable songs that stand among the best of their era, and 2) that its greatness is not a universally acknowledged fact in all lands far and wide. While Momus—real name Nick Currie—continues to make excellent records to this day (find out more here), I would suggest the uninitiated approach the man’s recording career chronologically for maximum effect. That this edition of the album contains three additional EPs’ worth of additional material released during that period—including his Beast With 3 Backs EP and his exceptional “Murderers, The Hope Of Women” single—makes it one of the year’s better buys and the best possible introduction to Nick Currie’s talent as a singer, songwriter, performer and conceptualist. Also available on vinyl and available here.
The Rolling Stones: From The Vault: Live At The Tokyo Dome 1990 (multi-format) (Eagle Rock) It wouldn’t be a holiday season if there weren’t at least one new thing available by the Rolling Stones; of late, there’s been a near embarrassment of riches via the band’s impressive and well-varied From The Vault series. While on the surface a batch of live Stone shows may seem the height of redundancy, think about it: Production, both sonically and visually, is usually top-notch (though in this case, the video is in SD Blu-ray format), and by zipping from Leeds in 1982 to, in this case, Tokyo in 1990, we’re able to hear live versions of “Sad Sad Sad,” “Almost Hear You Sigh,” “Can’t Be Seen,” even “Continental Drift,” and see the band performing with the much-missed Bill Wyman. And that won’t happen again. Most impressive of all is the sound quality—restored and newly mixed by Bob Clearmountain and positively pounding and clear. Let’s have more of these, please, from every era possible.
Car Seat Headrest: Teens Of Style (Matador) In eras past, record companies would send out physical promo copies of vinyl albums and, eventually, CDs, from which music writers could glean information, learn song titles, figure out that guitar player A also played with band B and appeared on album C, et cetera. It wasn’t much, but it was something. These days, many labels—and bless them for this, mind you—tend to send out downloads, whether in mp3, FLAC or WAV format, often unaccompanied by any explanatory material or even, god forbid, file metadata. Which is a lengthy prelude to explaining that I must have played this album five or six times before realizing the CD-R I’d burned and labeled Room (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Stephen Rennicks and thought, My God this is a fantastically avant-garde concept for a soundtrack was, in fact, labeled erroneously. In fact, this is the first Matador album by Car Seat Headrest, the work of Seattle performer Will Toledo, and a highly appealing, catchy, personality-filled album that evokes that whole Pastels/Jazzateers/Vaselines/Teenage Fanclub nasal/melody thing but still sounds like its own man, record-wise. I like it a lot, and I would probably go see Room for sure if this music was its soundtrack, which I suspect would make it even more of a squirmfest. Highly recommended.
Peter Case: HWY 62 (Omnivore) Kudos to Peter Case, the former member of the Nerves and Plimsouls, whose extended solo career has involved a steady flow of impressive records. Though I took a spin a few years ago and was re-invigorated by his 1989 set The Man with the Blue Post-Modern Fragmented Neo-Traditionalist Guitar—if you haven’t heard it, you should—I am equally impressed by the music and the subject matter of his new set here. Basically a collection of songs about the American heartland—sounds hokey, isn’t—Case’s singing and writing is particularly poignant, and the musicians, including Ben Harper, Don Heffington, D.J. Bonebrake and Dead Rock West, among others, could not be more sympathetic throughout. This is an especially fine album—that is, a collection of songs with a consistent theme running through it—and let’s hope it gets recognized as such.
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