brownbest

Jackson Browne / Late for the Sky – Lovin’ that Rich, Smooth Asylum Sound

More of the Music of Jackson Browne

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish, this copy is guarantee to blow the doors off any other Late for the Sky you’ve heard
  • This one was bigger and bolder, with more Tubey Magical richness on Jackson’s voice, than most of what we played
  • We love the rich, smooth, natural sound that Asylum was known for, and this copy has a healthy dose of each of those qualities
  • It’s getting harder and harder to find these in good condition these days – the man has a lot of fans, and they prefer to hear him on vinyl
  • 5 stars from AMG, and Rolling Stone calls it the “quintessential Browne album,” saying the “… open-ended poetry achieves power from the nearly religious intensity that accumulates around the central motifs; its fervor is underscored by the sparest and hardest production to be found on any Browne album yet… as well as by his impassioned, oracular singing style.”
  • If you’re a fan of the man, this title from 1974 is clearly one of his best, and one of his best sounding. (more…)

Jackson Browne – The Pretender

More Jackson Browne

 More Asylum Label Recordings

  • ou’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this this vintage Asylum pressing
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “weighty and rich”…”vox jumping out of the speakers”…”smooth and full and present”…”3D and rich”…”lots of bass”
  • The best pressings are Rock / Pop Demo Discs – they’re so rich and full-bodied they make most of the competition sound positively anemic
  • Five Stars in Rolling Stone, one of their Top 500 Albums, and a true classic from 1976
  • One of the best sounding records Jackson Browne ever made, along with his debut – this is the pressing that backs up everything we say and more
  • If you’re a Jackson Browne fan, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own
  • Asylum in the Seventies was known for its especially smooth recordings, but plenty of other labels produced smooth recordings, and here is a link to some of our favorites
  • These superb vintage pressings are quite different from the ones they are making these days, which have taken the concept of “smooth sounding analog” and stretched it well past its limits, resulting in a great many pressings that are far too smooth to be taken seriously

As I’m sure you know by now, especially if you own a few copies, most pressings of The Pretender don’t sound like Demo Discs. In fact, most copies of this record are mediocre at best — thin, grainy, and flat sounding.

This copy is none of those things. And it positively kills the famous MoFi pressing.

Problems to Watch For

Some of the more common problems we ran into during our shootouts were slightly veiled, slightly smeary sound, with not all the top end extension that the best copies have.

You can easily hear that smear on the guitar transients; usually they’re a tad blunted and the guitar harmonics don’t ring the way they should.

These problems are just as common to the original Asylum pressings as they are to the later LPs. Smeary, veiled, top-end-challenged pressings were regularly produced over the years. They are the rule, not the exception.

(more…)

Jackson Browne – His Debut Is Still His Best Album By Far

More Jackson Browne

More Asylum Label Recordings

  • Balanced, musical, present and full-bodied throughout – this copy was a big step up from most of what we played, particularly on side two
  • “… Jackson Browne’s first album is among the most auspicious debuts in pop music history”
  • 5 stars: “… the album has long since come to seem a timeless collection of reflective ballads touching on still-difficult subjects — suicide (explicitly), depression and drug use (probably), spiritual uncertainty and desperate hope — all in calm, reasoned tones, and all with an amazingly eloquent sense of language.”
  • If you’re a Jackson Browne fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1972 is clearly one of his best, and one of his two best sounding, the other one being The Pretender.
  • The complete list of titles from 1972 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

(more…)

Jackson Browne – Hold Out

More Jackson Browne

More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • Jackson Browne’s sixth album finally returns to the site with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • Big, rich, energetic, with tons of Analog Tubey Magic, this early pressing has exactly the right sound for this music
  • “An exploration of the pull of work. stardom and bittersweet expectations.” – Rolling Stone

We had a huge stack of copies but most of them left us entirely cold. A mediocre copy of The Pretender is still a decent sounding record, but the average pressing of this one is just not going to get the job done. We suffered through some of the blandest records to hit the table in ages in the shootout, but I’m pleased to report that a small group of copies actually managed to impress.

So many copies we played were just thick and veiled, keeping Jackson’s vocals in the speakers stuck in a cloudy haze. Most of our copies lacked texture entirely, which really sucked the life out of the music. It’s a good thing this album sold so well in its day, because it took a TON of copies to find a few that actually sounded like the Jackson Browne we know and love from The Pretender, Late For The Sky and the wonderful first album. (more…)

Jackson Browne – For Everyman

More Jackson Browne

More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • A KILLER copy of JB’s sophomore effort with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it on both sides
  • David Lindley joins the band, and talented helpers include Bonnie Raitt, Glen Frey, David Crosby, Elton John and Joni Mitchell
  • “His work is a unique fusion of West Coast casualness and East Coast paranoia, easygoing slang and painstaking precision, child’s-eye romanticizing and adult’s-eye acceptance… Brilliantly conceived, incomparably immediate, For Everyman truly earns its title.” – Rolling Stone

The average copy of this record is MUD, but this pressing will show you that the master tape of For Everyman is a whole lot better than most music lovers and audiophiles might suspect. (The first album is the same way.)

Want a quick test for transparency? Listen to the piano on I Thought I Was a Child. On most copies you can’t really hear the attack of the hammers hitting the strings, but here you can. If the tonal balance is correct — and it is on this copy — then you know you are getting a pressing of very high quality.

Note that the first track on side one almost never sounds as good as those that follow. (more…)

Jackson Browne – Running On Empty

More Jackson Browne

  • You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this Grammy-nominated release
  • Packed with previously unreleased songs, this live followup to The Pretender was an even bigger hit than that album
  • A hard record to find with audiophile quality sound – this is one of the few copies to ever hit the site
  • “…as impressed as I am with Jackson Browne’s art, I’m even more impressed with the humanity that shines through it.” — Rolling Stone Magazine

(more…)