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Neil Young / After the Gold Rush – Because Sound Matters?

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Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

I don’t know why I wasted so much time critiquing the sound of this remastered (2009) pressing. Frankly, it really wasn’t worth it.

However, since I listen to records for a living, I figured I might as well listen to this one, head to head of course with an excellent vintage pressing. 

We know what the good pressings of After the Gold Rush sound like, we play them regularly, and this newly remastered vinyl is missing almost everything that makes the album essential to any Right Thinking Music Lover’s collection.

We can summarize the sound of this dreadful record in one word: boring.

Since some of you reading this review are no doubt fans of Chris Bellman, the engineer credited on the album, and a man apparently held in some esteem by many audiophiles, perhaps we owe it to his fans to break down the sonic strengths and weaknesses of this pressing in more detail.

What It Does Right

It’s tonally correct. Unlike many modern pressings, it is not overly smooth.

Uh, can’t think of anything else…

What It Does Wrong

Where to begin?

It has no real space or ambience. When you play this record, it sounds as if it must have been recorded in a heavily padded studio. Somehow the originals of After the Gold Rush, like most of Neil’s classic albums from the era, are clear, open and spacious.

Cleverly the engineer responsible for this audiophile remastering managed to reproduce the sound of a dead studio on a record that wasn’t recorded in one.

In addition, the record never gets loud. The good pressings get very loud. They rock, they’re overflowing with energy.

And, lastly, there’s no real weight to the bottom end. The Whomp Factor* on this new pressing is practically non-existent. The bottom end of the originals is huge, deep and powerful.

The Bottom Line

This new Heavy Vinyl pressing is boring beyond belief. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for it. If Neil Young actually had anything to do with it, he should be ashamed of himself. If you want a good copy of the album, find yourself a vintage pressing. Please don’t throw your money away on this one.

If you did make the mistake of buying this album, did you notice its many shortcomings? And if not, why not?

And if Chris Bellman is such a good cutting engineer, as I hear tell, why does this record sound as bad as it so obviously does?

Were you perhaps a bit too impressed by the reputations of Young and Bellman and just figured those two guys must know what they are doing? It’s AAA, right? Made from the master tape? With tender loving care? Is there some reason it shouldn’t sound amazingly good with all that going for it?

No, no particular reason. It just doesn’t.

*For whomp factor, the formula goes like this: deep bass + mid bass + speed + dynamics + energy = whomp.

If you would like to evaluate your system’s ability to reproduce whomp, here are some records that we’ve found to be good for testing that quality.

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Neil Young / After the Gold Rush

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

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  • After the Gold Rush returns to the site after more than a one year hiatus, here with excellent Double Plus (A++) Tubey Magical sound or BETTER on both sides of this early Reprise pressing
  • Exceptionally quiet vinyl too, at the high end of Mint Minus Minus, the kind of vinyl we rarely find on early pressings of this album (which are of course the only ones that do well in our shootouts)
  • A very difficult record to find these days with the right stampers and audiophile playing surfaces
  • This is the vinyl embodiment of the Classic Analog Rock sound we love – smooth, rich, full-bodied, warm, punchy, dynamic and clear
  • 5 stars in Allmusic, Top 100, and a Demo Disc that is guaranteed to knock your socks off
  • “It’s a magnificent, style-setting album which saw the Canadian’s elevation to rock hero. For those who like their emotion raw.”
  • If you’re a Neil Young fan, and who isn’t?, this classic from 1970 belongs in your collection.

Folks, a Hot Stamper collection of the Greatest Rock Records of All Time would not be complete without a knockout copy this album. That’s why it’s been a Better Records All-Time Top 100 Title right from the start.

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Letter of the Week – “I know in one sense you’re only doing your job but who the hell else does what you do?”

Reviews and Commentaries for Deja Vu

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Just received Deja Vu – so good. I have never ever heard the vocals sound so natural and so full of power and energy.

The only similar record I have is After The Gold Rush and I got that from you guys too.

I know in one sense you’re only doing your job but who the hell else does what you do?

Thanks again guys for a brilliant record, a fantastic piece of history and art that I can hear whenever I want to.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for your letter. Those are two of our favorite records too, with sound that is hard to beat once you figure out which stampers are the ones with the potential for top quality sound.

These two records have a lot in common as it turns out.

Both are The Best Sounding Album produced by either the group or the artist.

Both are Must Own Records from 1970.

Both are of course in our Rock and Pop Top 100. Deja Vu is actually a member of our Top Ten, a rarefied group indeed.

Both are Rock Demo Discs for Big Speakers that Play at Loud Levels.

Both are members of The Core Collection of Well Recorded Rock & Pop Albums.

And, lastly, both are records that sell for large sums of money and rarely can be found in stock.

If we were to compile a list of records that are worth whatever you have to pay for them, these two would be right at the top of that list too.

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Letter of the Week – “The instruments fill my room like they would in a live performance.”

More of the Music of Neil Young

More of the Music of Crosby, Stills and Nash

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently: 

Hey Tom, 

I have really been enjoying the Neil Young “After The Gold Rush” and CSN&Y “So Far.” They are like the “Workingman’s Dead” LP. Just a thrill to hear. The instruments on “After The Gold Rush” fill my room like they would in a live performance. Addictive.

AJ

Addiction is the name of the game!

If you’re an audiophile who is not addicted to good sound and good music, you won’t be one for long.

And if you have been in this game for a very long time like I have, you have no doubt met self-identified audiophiles with systems that haven’t been improved in twenty years, and appear to be rarely used.

I like to think those are the audiophiles who own lots of audiophile records, the ones that are designed to show off stereo equipment and typically hold little interest from a musical standpoint.

The TAS Super Disc List is full of these records. We have no use for most of them and we suspect our customers don’t either.

Audiophiles with vintage pressings of real music rarely abandon the hobby in my experience.

And if you have Hot Stamper pressings, why would you ever give up on hearing music that sounds as good as our records sound?

Thanks for your letter.

TP

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Analog Transparency, and that Wonderful Feeling of Being There

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

For our review of the new Heavy Vinyl After the Gold Rush we wrote:

Cleverly the engineers responsible for this remaster seem to have managed to reproduce the sound of a dead studio on a record that wasn’t recorded in one.

This pressing has no real space or ambience. Now the album sounds like it was recorded in a heavily baffled studio, but we know that’s not what happened, because the originals of After the Gold Rush, like most of Neil’s other albums from the era, are clear, open and spacious.

In other words, they are transparent. You can easily hear into the record all the way to the back of the studio.

You hear all the space surrounding the players.

Modern records, like the recent [well, 2009] After the Gold Rush, are almost always opaque and airless.

We can’t stand that sound. In fact it drives us crazy.

Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found.

That audiophiles as a group — including those that pass themselves off as champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

Once you hear a top quality Hot Stamper pressing, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly-cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the newer ones.

This allows the faults of the current reissues to become much more recognizable, to the point of actually being obvious. When you can hear different pressings that way, head to head, there really is no comparison.

Further Reading

There is an abundance of audiophile collector hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and many of them are awful.

Music Matters made this garbage remaster. Did anyone notice how awful it sounded? I could list a hundred more that range from bad to worse — and I have! Take your pick: there are more than 150 entries in our Heavy Vinyl Disasters section, each one worse sounding than the next.

Audiophiles seem to have approached these records naively instead of skeptically.

(But wait a minute. Who am I to talk? I did the same thing when I first got into audio and record collecting in the Seventies.)

How could so many be fooled so badly? Surely some of these people have good enough equipment to allow them to hear the limitations of these modern pressings.

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When I (We?) First Started Doing Shootouts, They Would Sometimes Go on for Days

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

Our first Hot Stamper listing from back in 2005 talked about what a struggle it was doing them at first. Back then, with not much in the way of staff, I often had to put the records on the table one at a time and do all the listening and note-taking myself. For our first Hot Stamper listing I wrote:

A record like this might go through 4 or 5 stages of cleaning and listening and cleaning again. I spent many hours listening to the various copies I played over the course of two days, first one track, then another, this copy, then that one. There’s no other way to do it. There’s no shortcut. There’s no substitute for hard work.

If you can call it that. It ain’t too hard playing a great album over and over again. Some people — myself included — might even call it fun. And now I love this album more than I ever did. I feel like I have come to know it. I’m positively thrilled to finally know how good it really is!

Isn’t that why we audiophiles go through all this shite, as the Brits say? When I hear a piece of familiar music sound better than I ever thought I would hear it, better than I ever imagined it, it’s everything to me. It’s the biggest thrill I know of in audio. It’s what I live for. If you like that feeling, this is the record for you!

I don’t know how long it’s going to be before I find another copy that sounds like this one, but I’m guessing it’s going to be a long time. How many bad domestic rock records did I have to play in order to find a record that sounds like this? A hundred? More?! Who knows? It was a lot, that’s for damn sure.

More Must Own Titles

After The Gold Rush – Why So Expensive?

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

We built our reputation on finding Demo Disc Quality pressings like this. Who else can offer you a copy of After the Gold Rush that delivers this kind of Tubey Magical Analog sound?

The reason a record like this needs to sell for the kind of serious bread we charge is that there just aren’t that many clean copies that have survived; there aren’t that many copies with the right stampers; and there aren’t that many copies that were pressed just right, the way this one was.

I’ve been picking up originals of this record for 20 years. Nowadays we pick up every clean original copy that we see. People loved this album and played it to death. Who can blame them; it’s Young’s masterpiece. It’s actually a better album than Harvest, and Harvest is an awfully good album.

Most original copies of this album leave a lot to be desired. Some are clean but lack Tubey Magic and warmth. Others are thick, dull, and compressed sounding. And almost all of them are pressed on dubious vinyl or have been treated poorly.

Subtracting all the problematical copies, you’re left with only a handful of real contenders, copies that are good enough to go into a shootout with the potential to win it. If you would like to spend a couple of years finding, cleaning, and playing original pressings of After The Gold Rush, the chances are very good that you would eventually come across one like this.

Anyone can do it. But do you want to? Would you rather spend your free time searching for an amazing copy of Neil Young’s masterpiece or enjoying it?.

After the Gold Rush – Our “Hard” Work in 2005 Continues to Pay Dividends

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

After the Gold Rush Is Yet Another Record We’re Obsessed With

Below you will find our first Hot Stamper listing for Neil’s masterpiece from 1970.

This is an album we admit to being obsessed with. We love the album and we hope you do too. If you have some time on your hands — maybe a bit too much time on your hands — please feel free to check out our commentaries.

Folks, your Hot Stamper collection is just not complete without a knockout copy of After The Gold Rush; that’s why we’ve named it a Better Records All Time Top 100 title. We built our reputation on finding records that sound like this, because who else can find a copy of this album that delivers so much magic? When you drop the needle on any track on side two, you’ll know exactly why we are able to charge these kind of prices for a record like this — because on the right system, it’ll sound like a million bucks! (more…)

Listening in Depth to After the Gold Rush

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

Folks, a Hot Stamper collection of the Greatest Records of All Time would not be complete without a knockout copy of After the Gold Rush. That’s why it’s been a Better Records All Time Top 100 Rock Title right from the start.

We built our reputation on finding Demo Disc Quality recordings like this. Who else can offer you a copy of the album that delivers this kind of ANALOG MAGIC?

Side One

Tell Me Why

Just listen to those Tubey Magical acoustic guitars. You know right away that you’re about to have a sublime musical experience. Nothing sounds that way but analog. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “The sound is incredible. Neil’s voice is right in the room.”

More of the Music of Neil Young

Hot Stamper Pressings of Beatles for Sale Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently: 

Hey Tom, 

Just wanted to write and tell you how much I love that Neil Young After The Gold Rush White Hot Stamper I picked up last week. Really awesome. This ranks up with the best I’ve bought from you guys.

The sound is incredible. Neil’s voice is right in the room. The guitar sounds real and that harmonica is super. I love when he performs, just him and nobody else. I’m really stuck on Neil’s albums. The sound is just soooo good. I’m working on my system to get more out of these records.

Oh yeah, I picked up one of your “Beatles for Sale” albums for $65. [This must be an old letter!] Really nice for the money. Those Beatle albums can really be awesome. Have to get a White Hot Stamper Beatles album someday. (more…)