Ok, this is a GREAT album! When I say great album, I mean the music itself. It’s an all-time classic.
However, this pressing/record is pretty garbage.
Pops and clicks throughout (even with a good few cleans on the Spin Clean.
The sound itself is muddied and pretty flat. Percussion lacks any substance. It’s just not very good. Maybe it is
This is actually the ‘deluxe’ version. Comes across 2 discs – one contains the regular album while the other is a ‘redux’ version.
Now, this Redux version on disc 2 is a remaster by Brendan O’Brien, a US producer who worked as the mixer on the original album.
Great! This should fix that muddiness? Well, it does… things are much clearer…
BUT, it just doesn’t work for me. Vedder’s vocals are just too in my face now. The percussion (treble anyway) sounds very compressed. It really doesn’t work for me.
Maybe nothing more can be done for this? I used to listen to the album A LOT, but that would have been on sub-par systems and poor headphones. Quite possible that this (original disc) is the experience I get. Remember that this was their first album and in the grunge explosion of the early 90s. This was a sound that wasn’t produced to be ‘clean’.
Not the usual cover, but a sepia gatefold that foldout for a vertical image of the band with hands held high. Has a strange circular insert (see pic). Is this supposed to be some sort of slipmat cover? Doesn’t have a hole! Weird. The inside of the gatefold is quite nice with scribbling of the lyrics.
From what I’ve read, I’m not sure there are actually any good pressing (or masters) out there? Or if there are it’s a crapshoot, so I’ve held back on getting a replacement until someone can prove there’s a decent copy for me.
I’m going to revisit the album on other media and see what I can find. Am I searching for something that doesn’t exist and the Ten of my youth lives in my head only?