I'm looking forward to the new Bill Callahan album,
Woke On A Whaleheart, not only because I have this aching feeling that it's going to be a beautiful piece of work, one that I can relate to and fall in love with, but also because I think it's going to offer excellent sound quality, and I just can't wait to hear it on the hi-fi. This is interesting to me because I never looked forward to an album for its sound quality before. Even when reading our own
Stereophile record reviews, I've paid little attention to the number of stars placed besides the "Sonics" heading, except to make sure they're the right size and font.
Of course, when I was in a band and we made our own albums, I did want them to sound as good as possible, but the end result, the product, was more a celebration of a moment in time spent creating art with good friends — laughing and singing and drinking — not so much an investigation into sound. While we went into it holding gently to some philosophical considerations (add as little compression and reverb as possible, don't hide the mistakes, go easy with the overdubs, include elements of the recording atmosphere such as the chirping of birds outside, the doorbell ringing, laughter and frustration), we never really approached it with the idea of making an audiophile recording. We weren't audiophiles, after all. It wasn't like John Atkinson faithfully presenting a single magic February night at Merkin Hall.
And so, and so, and so, and so: I'm also excited about the upcoming album,
The Reminder, by Feist. Her last effort, 2005's
Let It Die, was, like Smog's
A River Ain't Too Much To Love, a great album that was also great-sounding. In my opinion. I'd give them each four stars for sonics, four to four and a half for performance. And
The Reminder promises to carry on. Feist, I suspect, is owner of an audiophile heart. She openly admits to obsessing over equalization and guitar tones, while the story behind the recording of
The Reminder includes chilly details of early mornings spent trying to capture the sounds of birds and fond recollections of microphone placement. You can listen to a bit of the album's first single, "My Moon, My Man," at
Feist's website.
