The Replacements’ ‘Tim: Let It Bleed Edition’ Was Worth the Can’t-Hardly-Waiting: Album Review
28.09.2023 - 01:09
/ variety.com
Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic How much is Paul Westerberg like Bob Dylan? That’s a provocative question — maybe one we need to save for when we know each other better. So let’s just start a related, but easier, one.
How much is the Replacements’ “Tim: Let It Bleed Edition,” a just-released boxed set that commemorates that band’s classic 1985 album “Tim,” akin to another boxed set that came out earlier this year — Dylan’s “Fragments: Time Out Of Mind Sessions 1996-1997,” an expansion of his classic 1997 album “Time Out of Mind”? That’s an easier conversational icebreaker. Beyond the fact that the two original releases might be right next to each other in your collection, if you happen to be insane enough to alphabetize albums by title instead of artist, there’s the fact — well, strongly held belief bordering on fact — that both “Tim” and “Time” are rock masterpieces that share a common fundamental flaw: problematic mixes.
Mixes that have been mutually, coincidentally corrected with spectacular 2023 do-overs. Yes, there are diehards who continue to contend that producer Daniel Lanois’ swampiness on the original Dylan album did not need to be de-murked.
There will probably also be a few (but fewer) who’ll argue that the Replacements album they have known and loved for 37 years was just fine with all of the digital reverb laid on by that record’s producer, Tommy Erdelyi (aka Tommy Ramone). Both Lanois and Erdelyi made fundamentally phenomenal records; nothing about their roles in those records constitutes villainy.
But most fans will surely agree: One of the benefits of hindsight is that not everything needs to sound like it was recorded in a Grand Central Station lavatory. And while it’s good for
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