Anti-Climacus

PAPER BREAK: Since I've hit half my target for today, a brief review of the remastered Exile on Main Street, which I have recently purchased:

I don't know that I really like it. Remastering almost always means "making each of the original instruments more distinct." Usually that's a good thing, since it allows you to hear more clearly how all the parts are supposed to fit together. But given that the primary attraction of Exile from a production standpoint is how murky ("impressionistic") it is, this works against the album as a whole. It still works at higher volumes, where everything blends together appropriately, but at lower volumes, the proliferation of instruments, all now clearly defined, sound 'busy' rather than 'dense'--there's too much to try and follow. If you think of it, instead, as the equivalent to the edits-and-all version of The Great Gatsby--it lets you peek under the hood and see how something great is put together--it's considerably better.

The new tracks? Mostly confirmation of how important Keith was, and how much trouble Mick caused. The version of "Soul Survivor" has the same backing track, but with some placeholder lyrics by Keith: but still an excellent-sounding song. The Mick-oriented songs are of considerably lower musical quality: it's rare for a Stones song to make a chord change conspicuous, but it happens a lot here. And most of them sound like Tattoo You, minus the punk and new wave influences. Not good.