spacious-r/p

Spacious rock and pop albums.

Talking Heads – Talking Heads: 77

More of the Music of The Talking Heads

  • A vintage pressing of Talking Heads’ debut album (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in years) with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom
  • Big and open with lots of layered depth to the soundfield, and sonics that positively jump out of the speakers
  • The sound here is so analog — warm, rich and smooth with the kind of fullness and life that are hard to come by for this music
  • The sound of the best pressings is raw, real and exceptionally unprocessed
  • 5 stars: “Talking Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a sound that seemed alternately threatening and goofy. The music was undeniably catchy, even at its most ominous, especially on ‘Psycho Killer,’ Byrne’s supreme statement of demented purpose. And that made Talking Heads: 77 a landmark album

If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1977, this album would definitely be on it

We’re huge Talking Heads fans at Better Records, but we’d never tried to shoot out this album before 2011 because the copies we had played to that point were no great shakes. And that trend of mediocity only continued in the ensuing decade since, alas.

We’d forgotten how amazing this album can sound on the best pressings. I’d even say that it’s a sonic step up from Fear Of Music and Remain In Light, probably tying with More Songs About Buildings and Food and Little Creatures for top Talking Heads honors.

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Stevie Ray Vaughan – The Sky Is Crying

More Stevie Ray Vaughan

Albums with Especially Dynamic Guitar Solos

  • SRV’s rock masterpiece, here with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • A Triple Plus side one means you get a “Little Wing” that is guaranteed to be one of the best sounding tracks you have ever played in your audiophile life
  • Some of the most blistering performances of electric blues we have ever had the pleasure of rocking out to
  • Hands down the best sounding SRV recording – “Little Wing” is an absolute monster on this side one and a demo track to beat them all
  • 4 stars: “Doing away with vocals, Vaughan augments Hendrix’s concise two-and-a-half minute original, turning the track into a nearly seven-minute-long electric tour de force. The cover would earn Vaughan his sixth Grammy, for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, in 1992.”
  • We know about quite a few records that rock this hard. We seek them out, and we know how to play them.

This is one of the most blistering recordings of electric blues we’ve ever played. Few other records recorded in the ’80s have this kind of big, bold sound. Maybe none. The sheer impact and wallop of this music is a real treat, but only if you have the right pressing, and the right kind of stereo to play it on.

Stevie’s take on Jimi’s “Little Wing” is the surest proof that SRV was one of the greatest Electric Blues Guitarists of All Time. I know of no other guitar showcase to compete with it.

Turn it up good and loud and you will be amazed at how dynamic the guitar solos are.

Sonically it’s a knockout, with one of the tallest, widest, and deepest soundstages I have ever heard on record. It brings to mind Gilmore’s multiple solos on Money from the hottest Dark Side of the Moon pressings, high praise indeed.

“Little Wing” deservedly won SRV the Grammy in ’92 for Best Rock Instrumental.

And, if you want to hear Stevie channel Wes Montgomery instead of Jimi Hendrix, take a listen to “Chitlins Con Carne.”

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Donny Hathaway – Donny Hathaway Live

More Donny Hathaway

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • Amazing sound for this classic live album, with both sides earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Hathaway and his band are on fire here playing for an enthusiastic small club audience – this is the best album the man ever made and a true Must Own
  • It takes us years to run across enough clean copies of this album to do a shootout, so don’t expect to see another one in audiophile playing condition on the site for a while
  • The relatively high price reflects the amount of work it takes us to find clean copies with the right stampers, as well as the frustration we feel when the records that come our way are just too noisy and groove damaged to be enjoyable
  • For those on a budget, buy the plain old Atlantic CD – it’s excellent
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Donny Hathaway’s 1972 Live album is one of the most glorious of his career… Live solidified Hathaway’s importance at the forefront of soul music.”
  • If you’re a Donny Hathaway fan, this is a Must Own Classic from 1972 that belongs in your collection.

This is an absolutely outstanding recording. The better copies capture the feeling of a live club like few recordings you’ve ever heard. The enthusiasm of the crowd, the honest, emotive performances, the superb musicianship — it’s all there on a Shootout Winning Hot Stamper copy like this.

I’ve been playing this record regularly since I first heard it back in the mid-90s. It never gets old. If I could take only one soul album to my desert island, it would be this one, no doubt about it.

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David Bowie – Young Americans

More David Bowie

  • A seriously good copy of Bowie’s one and only soul album with Hot Stamper sound on both sides
  • This pressing was simply bigger and fuller than most of the competition, with plenty of funky energy and three-dimensional studio space
  • On an exceptionally transparent copy such as this one, it’s much easier to pick out all the background vocalists in the relatively dense mixes that Bowie tends to favor
  • One of our favorites by The Man, with so many killer tracks: “Young Americans,” “Win,” “Fascination,” “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” “Across the Universe” and, of course, “Fame”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Young Americans is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would be well advised to get to know better.

The strings have amazing amounts of texture — you can really hear the sound of the rosin on the bow. The highs are silky sweet and the bottom end is punchy and powerful. You won’t believe how lively the cymbal crashes sound — you’re right there in the room with all these guys and gals.

This is one of our favorite Bowie albums. Nobody seems to care about it anymore. They dismiss it as disco junk, but it actually has some of his best music on it. I especially like the song Win. David Sanborn’s saxophone sounds like it’s coming from 60 feet behind Bowie, a nice effect. (more…)

Extracting the Midrange Magic of Buffalo Springfield Again

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Buffalo Springfield Available Now

So many copies of this album sound so bad and play so poorly that most audiophiles have given up by now and written it off as a lost cause.

But we didn’t. We kept at it. Our main motivation? The music.

Extracting the midrange magic from a album like this should be the goal of every right-thinking audiophile.

Who cares what’s on the TAS Super Disc List? I want to play the music that I love, not because it sounds good, but because I love it.

And if the only way to find good sounding copies of typically poorly-mastered, beat-to-death records such as this one is to go through a big pile of them, well then, I guess that’s what we’ll have to do.

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