3 Remastered Albums That Sound Better Than the Originals Ever Did
I'm getting old and have been listening to music for a long time now, realistically 25 years since I got my Walkman CD player, jamming to the Beatles' 1 collection and my Smash Mouth CD. But some albums sound different now than they did back then, and usually for the better. So here's a short list of albums I love that, thanks to remastering and better technology, sound even better today than they did when they first came out. Unfortunately, a lot of remastered albums become victims of the loudness war, so it's worth calling out the ones that actually got it right.
Tim, The Replacements
Putting on the original Tim CD in the mid 80s, it sounded dark and grungy and sloppy. At the time, that fit the band perfectly. Now, listening to the Ed Stasium mix, it's night and day. It's like listening to a different band. When this came out a few years ago, it truly reignited my love for this group.
The Replacements Mid 80s
The reissue is called Tim: Let It Bleed Edition, and it came out in September 2023 as a four CD, one LP box set. The whole thing centers on a brand new remix by Ed Stasium, the guy known for his work with the Ramones and Talking Heads, who went back to the original multitracks and spent months building a fuller, more detailed version of the record. The original 1985 mix was handled by producer Tommy Erdelyi, better known as Tommy Ramone, and even fans who love that version tend to admit it never quite captured the band's live power. Stasium's remix strips away a lot of the murk and reverb, and suddenly you can hear things that were buried for almost 40 years, like the guitar work between verses on "Bastards of Young" and the piano and strings on "Here Comes a Regular." The box also includes the remastered original mix so you can do your own A/B comparison, plus a disc of Alex Chilton produced demos and a previously unreleased live show from a 1986 gig in Chicago. It's rare for an album that critics already loved on release to get remixed this dramatically, which makes it even more special that they pulled it off.
Wild Honey, The Beach Boys
This album was clearly an afterthought when it came out. The Beach Boys were really going through it. Their music had started to sound uncool next to releases from artists like Jimi Hendrix. Brian was losing creative steam but still contributing little tidbits of tunes here and there. The group still had it vocally, but the result on Wild Honey is a short record, a little over 24 minutes, of mixed results, half-baked ideas, soulful covers, and leftover scraps from Smile. Still, they're the Beach Boys, and that warm sound gives it real charm.
I remember searching endlessly in record stores for this album back in the day and never finding it. It must not have sold well. Then I finally found a copy in Michigan, and the record store clerk was shocked too, telling me what a nice find it was, that you never see this one. I felt great about it. Until a year later.
Beach Boys on the Beach
Then in 2017 they released the Sunshine Tomorrow reissue, and wow, what a difference. First off, it's strange to hear the record in stereo at all, because Wild Honey had never been mixed in true stereo before. It was recorded and mixed only in mono back in 1967, so the 2017 reissue actually premiered the first ever stereo version of the album, put together by reissue producers Mark Linett and Alan Boyd. Suddenly you can hear so many different sounds you never noticed before. I think this is the most entertaining way to listen to the record now. Purists will say mono is the real way to hear the Beach Boys, and there's one track, "Mama Says," that stayed mono on this reissue because the multitrack tape for it was never found. But for the rest of the album, modern technology genuinely brought this one to life in a way it never had before.
Buffalo Springfield Self-Titled
This one was kind of a backward story for me. I really got into Buffalo Springfield around 2020 through their self-titled debut. I felt like it never gets talked about, and I couldn't figure out why, since I think every song on it is solid, not just "For What It's Worth." Then I read that the band themselves were let down by how the album was recorded and that it didn't end up selling very well. I thought that was strange, because I think it sounds great. Then I listened to the original mix, and wow, it's night and day. I could barely get through it, it sounded so badly recorded.
Turns out the band had good reason to be unhappy. The album was produced by the group's managers, Charles Greene and Brian Stone, neither of whom had much production experience, and the band felt it never captured the intensity of their live shows. They actually asked Atco for time to re-record it, but the label wanted it out in time for the holiday season and released it as is. Stills and Young always maintained that their own mono mix was better than the stereo version Greene and Stone put together, and to make things worse, the stereo master tape for one track, "Baby Don't Scold Me," was eventually lost, so it has never been available in stereo since that first 1966 pressing.
Buffalo Springfield 1966
Neil Young, being the archival obsessive he is, has made sure both the mono and stereo mixes live on properly through his Archives project, and remasters pulled from the original tapes under his supervision have finally let this one breathe. The band's preferred dedicated mono mix corrects that original rush job stereo release, and hearing it that way makes it obvious why the songs themselves, especially "Sit Down I Think I Love You" and "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing," deserved so much better than they got the first time around. I'm so glad Neil cares this much about archiving and remastering his work, otherwise we may never have gotten a version of this album that actually sounds like the band that made it.
