In our opinion, Business As Usual is the band’s best sounding album, and probably the only Men at Work record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done.
As a bit of background just in case you are not familiar with the album, the domestic pressings are horrendously bright. We have never played one that didn’t sound like the treble was jacked up to a level just this side of ear-bleed.
The only way to hear this album sound right is on Australian, Dutch, British and, more than a little surprisingly, even Japanese vinyl. Yes, we have heard them all.
We’ve liked about one out of every one hundred Japanese pressings we’ve played over the last twenty years. We were surprised to find that the Japanese copy of Business As Usual we played many years ago was pretty good, for what that’s worth.
(We can’t be sure that on our current system with our current ears we would feel the same.)
We tend to prefer the Brits but it seems that any import is worth a listen. The key, as always, is in the mastering and pressing.
What We’re Listening For On Business As Ususal
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Side One
Who Can It Be Now?
I Can See It In Your Eyes
Down Under
Underground
Helpless Automaton
Side Two
People Just Love To Play With Words
Be Good Johnny
Touching the Untouchables
Catch a Star
Down By the Sea
Other Reviews
Garry Raffaele opined that it “generally stays at a high level, tight and jerky … There is a delicacy about this music — and that is not a thing you can say about too many rock groups. The flute and reeds of Greg Ham do much to further that”.
McFarlane noted that “[a]side from the strength of the music, part of the album’s appeal was its economy. The production sound was low-key, but clean and uncluttered. Indeed, the songs stood by themselves with little embellishment save for a bright, melodic, singalong quality.”
Wikipedia