muddyroom

Two and a half minutes is the longest anything gets here and I still sat through both discs in one go. B-sides are why you own this instead of a hits disc. Half of them are stronger than the single they got stuck behind, which tells you what the label thought a hit sounded like. Bradley wrote a note on every one, and it reads like a man remembering rather than a man selling you a record you already own in another shape. The 1980s stretch at the end thins right out, everybody says so and they are right, and it costs the thing almost nothing. Chronological, nothing bolted on to justify the secon

Tracked mostly live at Mad Oak, and that decision is the whole record. Viglione's drums aren't clawing at the piano for space the way they did in 2006; everything sits where it should, and when he settles into a repeated figure and just holds it, it's nearly motorik, which the original never had the room to be. Palmer plays slower and more deliberately and the songs are better for it. Sing with Veronica Swift builds now instead of just getting louder. I usually have nothing but contempt for re-recordings, they're normally a rights grab with nothing new on the tape. This one has new arrangement

Forever at least had a low end you could feel through the floor. This hands that back for acoustic guitar, synth strings and a tenderness nobody was asking them for. The Dogs of War is the only thing on here that moves at all and it's just distortion with no pulse under it, and Going Home wants to be folk and electronic in the same breath and lands on neither. Nothing locks into a groove and holds it. I gave it headphones twice out of fairness. The second pass was worse.

Not what I usually come here for and it's been on three times this week. Opens the record and gives the turn away immediately, sixties pop bones over a groove that keeps rolling without ever needing to arrive. Not motorik, nothing close, the drums are telling you where the chorus is the whole time. Headphones or don't bother, the appeal is all that stacked air around the harmonies and a car stereo eats it. Lyric's about somebody stripping the beauty out of nature, written better than it needed to be. Anyone still waiting on another Shine will be furious.

Headphones and it stops being one Appalachian blur. Helm, Danko and Manuel come apart into three men in a room, each deciding when to come in. That alone justifies the 2000 cut. Manuel's organ arriving ahead of the cannonball verse turns out to be an actual part, not the smudge I'd been hearing for years. They went back to the original four-track for this and put nine outtakes and demos on the disc rather than listing them on the back, which almost nobody bothers to do. Danko on the Crazy Chester verse still sounds like a completely different record for as long as it lasts. The groove keeps