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bossanova808
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and PS – The National don’t really ROCK, neither live nor on record. They kind of build and pulse and shimmer and envelope – but that’s a long long way from a fucking rock sound, baby.
It’s not about rock/pop/whatever – it’s about dynamics. It’s about things having depth and room to breathe, it’s about pushing the boundaries but not crossing them – hell, you’ve got ears, jsut listen. If you can’t hear this is a shit mix then …well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s me but I like good production values – and that can certainly leave some live/raw feeling in place, look at Dragonslayer for example – that’s got plenty of RAW but just massive dynamics going on compared to this….where all the good, the great, gets lost in the wash.
Despite the talk about that Veck. release and subsequent, definitely better, CD, there wasn’t that much difference in the fundamentals of them – the final Veckatimest, while lovingly crafted, is still not wonderfully recorded in places, with quite a lot of murk and shadow in the mix. I’m sure one day there will be a re-master – which will not be any better but at least the record companies will extract a few more pennies from hope.
This whole leak is relatively flat though, so here’s hoping you’re right, that the final mix will have all sort of depth this lacks and The National really deseve and need (and have had in the past with better produced albums, notably Boxer and the EPs preceeding that).
To be fair this is based on the leak but in my long experience, the leaks are almsot always pretty good matches for the final release despite apologists always sayings its the leak….
I think this evaluation is caught up in the hype – there are some good songs here but they’re buried under some pretty messy production, and it’s quite tedious to listen to that sort of mess all the way through – they’ve lost a lot of their musicality in the mix, and it’s a crying shame.
I think so few albums are well produced now people are forgetting what they sound like…
and PS – The National don’t really ROCK, neither live nor on record. They kind of build and pulse and shimmer and envelop – but that’s a long long way from a fucking rock sound, baby.