More of the Music of Supertramp
- Boasting two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard Supertramp’s 1977 release sound this good – fairly quiet vinyl too
- On side two, the recording quality of the solo piano at the start of the second track is nothing short of breathtaking
- No piano on any Supertramp album sounds more powerful, more real or more present than the one on “From Now On”
- The bottom end is big and punchy, the top is smooth and sweet, and the vocals are present and breathy
- On a transparent copy such as this, the drums really punch through the dense mixes clearly, giving the music more life and energy
- “…it’s a transitional album, bridging the gap between Crime of the Century and the forthcoming Breakfast in America… [it] has plenty of fine moments aside from ‘Give A Little Bit,’ including the music hall shuffle of ‘Loverboy,’ the Euro-artiness of ‘From Now On,’ and the ‘Fool on a Hill’ allusions on ‘Fool’s Overture.'”
- If you’re a Supertramp fan like me, this art rock classic from 1977 belongs in your collection.
What To Listen For
The piano on “Give A Little Bit” can get buried in the dense mix. Side ones that are rich and tubey and smooth with a clear piano did very well in our shootout.
“Lover Boy” is a Demo Quality Track on the better copies. It can be huge, spacious and lively. Getting the strings to sound harmonically rich without sliding into shrillness may not be easy but some copies manage it. On the biggest, richest copies the breakdown at about 2:20 is a lot of fun.
On side two, the recording quality of the solo piano at the start of the second track is nothing short of breathtaking. No piano on any Supertramp album sounds as good.
This vintage A&M pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What The Best Sides Of Even In The Quietest Moments Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1977
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
What We’re Listening For On Even In The Quietest Moments
- 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 engineers worth their salt — Peter Henderson and Geoff Emerick in this case — would have 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
Give a Little Bit
Lover Boy
Even in the Quietest Moments
Downstream
Side Two
Babaji
From Now On
Fool’s Overture
AMG Review
The title of Even in the Quietest Moments… isn’t much of an exaggeration — this 1977 album finds Supertramp indulging in some of their quietest moments, spending almost the album in a subdued mood. Actually, the cover photo picture of a snow-covered piano sitting on a mountain gives a good indication of what the album sounds like: it’s elegant yet mildly absurd, witty but kind of obscure. It also feels more pop than it actually is, despite the opening single, “Give a Little Bit,” their poppiest song to date, as well as their biggest hit.