More of the Music of Jethro Tull
Reviews and Commentaries for Thick as a Brick
Sonic Grade: D
An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Half-Speed Mastered Audiophile LP reviewed and found wanting.
Here you will find the same problems as the MoFi Meddle, released the previous year, 1984. Here is what we had to say about it back in the day when we were selling this kind of crap.
The MoFi is TRANSPARENT and OPEN, and the top end will be lush and extended. If you prize clarity, this is the one.
But if you prize clarity at the expense of everything else, you are seriously missing the boat on Meddle (and of course Thick As A Brick too).
The MoFi is all mids and highs with almost nothing going on below.
This is a rock record, but without bass and dynamics the MoFi pressing doesn’t rock, so why would anyone want to own it or play it?
The one thing these pressings have going for them is that they tend to be transparent in the midrange.
It sounds like someone messed with the sound, and of course someone did. That’s how they get those audiophile records to sound the way they do.
For some reason, some audiophiles like their records to sound pretty and lifeless with blurry bass.
The Whomp Factor on this pressing is Zero. Since whomp is critical to the sound of this album, it’s Game Over for us.
That is not our sound here at Better Records. We don’t offer records with shortcomings like these and we don’t think audiophiles should have to put up with records that sound the way this one does.
Our Thick as a Brick Story
Until about 2007 this was the undiscovered gem (by me anyway) in the Tull catalog. The pressings we had heard up until then were nothing special, and of course the average pressing of this album is exactly that: no great shakes.
With the advent of better record cleaning fluids and much better tables, phono stages, room treatments and the like — taking full advantage of the remarkable number of revolutions in audio that have occurred over the last two or three decades –some copies of Thick As A Brick have shown themselves to be truly amazing sounding. Even the All Music Guide could hear how well-engineered the album was.
This Is the Sound
This is the sound we spend our days looking for. If you’ve got the system that can play an album of this size and power, you will hear exactly what we mean.
When you can hear it right, the music really comes to life and starts to work its magic. All the variations on the themes separate themselves out. Each of the sections, rather than sounding repetitive or monotonous, instead develop in ways both clever and engaging. The more times you listen to it the more nuances and subtleties you will find hidden in the dense complexity.
Just the number of time-signature changes on either side is enough to boggle the mind. Of course, if you listen very carefully you can hear that most of them are accompanied by edits, but it’s fun to listen for those too!
Simply put, the more you play it the better you will understand it and the more you will like it. This is of course the hallmark of all good music.
Further Reading
If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered LPs.
At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy of the album.
And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.