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SONIC GRADE: (?) |
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| Side one: |
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| Side two: |
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VINYL PLAYGRADE:(?) |
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| Side one: |
Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus |
| Side two: |
Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus |
We thoroughly enjoy listening to Tom Waits here at Better Records - the music and sound are more often than not excellent. His albums are a nice change of pace from the stuff that's usually spinning on our table. The sound is typically rich and natural with wonderful immediacy to the man's vocals.
Credit BONES HOWE with getting Waits' sound right. This is a man who knows Tubey Magic like practically no one else in the world. The Association, The Mamas and the Papas, The Fifth Dimension -- all their brilliant recordings are the result of Bones Howe's inestimable talents as producer and engineer.
This obviously ain't your everyday Classic Rock album -- Waits' music is an acquired taste and certainly not for everyone. We happen to dig it a lot.
What to Listen For (WTLF)
This copy has the kind of sound we look for in a top quality Bluesy Singer Songwriter Album (assuming any of these categories are sufficient to hold the unique qualitiy of this man's work.)
Some things to listen for:
Immediacy in the vocals (so many copies are veiled and distant);
Freedom from smear (easily heard on the piano transients; they are often a tad blunted and the harmonics won't ring the way they should);
Natural tonal balance (most copies are at least slightly brighter or darker than ideal; ones with the right balance are the exception, not the rule);
Spaciousness (the best copies have wonderful studio ambience and space);
And last but not least, transparency, the quality of being able to see into the studio, where there is plenty of musical information to be revealed in this simple but sophisticated recording.
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful originals.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.
