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Can we talk about how 'Smile' by The Beach Boys beats 'Pet Sounds' for me?
I compared both albums side by side last week and 'Smile' just flows better as a whole piece, where 'Pet Sounds' feels like scattered singles stitched together. Has anyone else found an old album that demands a relisten after years?
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seth_green855mo ago
Totally with you on this one. Smile has this raw, unfinished energy that feels more like a wild creative burst than a polished product, and that makes it way more exciting to me. I recently revisited an old 70s psych-rock record I hadn't touched in years and it completely hit different, so I get the urge to dig back into stuff that didn't click the first time around.
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cameron7245mo ago
Yeah, that raw energy is exactly it. It hits you different when something just feels like a person in a room making noise because they have to, not because a record label told them to. I had a similar thing with a demo tape I found from some band from my hometown, it was all scratchy and the drums were all over the place but it just felt alive in a way the final album never did. Makes you wonder how many great things get polished until the life is sucked out of them. Glad I'm not the only one who gets that.
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piper1755mo ago
Read something the other day about how compression in mastering can actually remove the air and space from a recording. That first pass stuff usually has way more dynamic range before they squish it all flat. Crazy how much gets lost in the name of making things sound "professional.
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