Music Reviews

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Music Reviews
Remaster Class – Soundgarden: Badmotorfinger
Mike Mettler  |  Jan 29, 2024

Burning Dinosaur Bones

Soundgarden was catching fire. The proto-headbanging Seattle-bred foursome began to emerge from the misnomered grunge ooze with their second LP, September 1989’s aptly named Louder Than Love, with tracks like “Loud Love” and “Big Dumb Sex” deftly adding observational tact to the band’s already thunderous bouillabaisse. And then, in October of that forever-hallowed alt-rock emergence year of 1991, Soundgarden swerved into even more progressive-leaning hard-metal lanes with the unrelenting Badmotorfinger.

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Music Reviews
Remaster Class – Stone Temple Pilots: Core
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 08, 2024

These Are the Eyes of Disarray: S&V music editor Mike Mettler evaluates multiple versions of Stone Temple Pilots’ September 1992 debut album Core, which laid the foundation for a hard-rocking rollercoaster ride steeped in the three G’s—garage, glam, and groove. . .

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Music Reviews
Remaster Class – Tears for Fear: Songs From The Big Chair
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 15, 2023
Tears For Fears vaulted into the international big leagues with the take-no-prisoners layered-sound approach to their February 1985 sophomore album, Songs From The Big Chair. It was a calculated production leap from the aural cocoon of their more minimalistic, electronic-leaning debut, March 1982’s The Hurting — and it was a move that paid off handsomely with multi-platinum sales and upper-echelon chart domination around the globe.
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class – The Doobie Brothers: The Captain and Me
Mike Mettler  |  May 15, 2023
The Doobie Brothers are the consummate 1970s band. Their Northern California-bred sound consists of a harmonious amalgamation of rock, R&B, soul, and blues — a veritable melting-pot musical blend that continues to galvanize audiences the world over five-plus decades later, especially given The Doobies are currently on the road all summer long in continuation of their pandemically delayed 50th anniversary tour.
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Derek and the Dominos: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 19, 2021
Eric Clapton was in pain. Deep pain. He was hopelessly in love with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his close friend George Harrison, and there was little he could do about it. Hence, Clapton did what any relatively desperate artist would to express his innermost feelings about the situation—he created an alternate identity (Derek), gathered a semi-fictional band around him (The Dominos), and channeled all of his heartache into a triumphant, sprawling double album, November 1970's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 23, 2021
Elton John was in the zone. The piano prodigy and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin were in the midst of an almost decade-long creative mindmeld, and October 1973's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was the apex of their collaboration. The initially unintended double album's 17 songs covered the gamut from nostalgic reverie for days gone by (the title track, the indelible "Candle in the Wind") to pumped-up '70s-style electric-boot rockers ("Bennie and the Jets," "All the Girls Love Alice"), and everything in between.
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Brain Salad Surgery
Mike Mettler  |  May 24, 2019
Brain Salad Surgery, Emerson, Lake & Palmer's grand progressive opus of November 1973, was the one LP I knew I could play for my fraternal grandparents to show them rock music was as legitimate an aural artform as classical or jazz. When I first cued up the original Manticore/Atlantic vinyl on their stereo console during an early-1980s visit, I began with the one-two tandem of ELP's reimagining
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Genesis: Selling England by the Pound
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 18, 2019
When Genesis tendered their fifth album, Selling England by the Pound, in October 1973, they finally cemented the promise that had been on display in fits and spurts on their previous LPs. (See the wide aural swath of "The Knife" from 1970's Trespass and the mind-expanding combo of "Watcher of the Skies" and "Supper's Ready" from 1972's Foxtrot as prime examples.)
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Jethro Tull: Aqualung
Mike Mettler  |  Dec 13, 2019
Jethro Tull made a bold move with their fourth album, March 1971's Aqualung, by amping up the intensity that informed the eclectic, prog-folk acoustic/electric hybrid the British band had firmly established on their first three LPs. That move effectively catapulted Tull headlong into the slipstream of the first wave of FM radio-favored artists. In fact, one could even argue the opening six-note pattern of the iconic title track is as instantly recognizable as the recurring four-note riff that defines Deep Purple's seminal "Smoke on the Water" (sorry, just wond'ring aloud here).
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 06, 2020
Few artists have oh-so-quantifiably defined their own uncopiable sound as definitively as King Crimson did with their October 1969 debut, the full-title-mouthful In the Court of the Crimson King: An Observation by King Crimson. This five-track, beyond-progressive salvo brought together forward-thinking pastoral, orchestral, jazz, and blues-rock sounds into a distinctive blend that only served to widen the overall aural palette of the most formative decade in popular music.
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Moody Blues: In Search of the Lost Chord
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 16, 2019
If the Moody Blues' most brazen, brave, and bold November 1967 mixture of conceptual rock and broad classical arrangements known as Days of Future Passed both saved their career and opened newer doors of sonic perception for them (and us) to walk through, then their mind-expanding July 1968 follow-up, In Search of the Lost Chord, truly cemented their position as purveyors of some of the headiest of mixes to essentially usher in a new era of progressive music. Indeed, the magnificent Moodies' late-'60s and early-'70s stereo mixes are often credited with helping to sell the true advantages the then-burgeoning FM format had over AM radio in the United States.
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Music From Big Pink
Mike Mettler  |  Dec 06, 2018
2018 50th Anniversary Capitol CD

Right in the swirling midst and mists of psychedelia, hard rock, and acid rock, The Band’s July 1968 debut, Music From Big Pink, was a literal breath of rustic fresh air. In fact, Big Pink was seemingly dropped onto the music scene from out of nowhere—even though it was mostly born and bred in the basement of a cozy little rosy-hued house in upstate New York (one that frequently entertained a certain motorcycle-injury-recovering songbard by the name of B. Dylan as a regular creative contributor to the proceedings).

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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Queen: A Night at the Opera
Mike Mettler  |  May 01, 2019
Queen’s fourth studio effort, November 1975’s A Night at the Opera, was a masterstroke of mid-1970s multitrack recording. We dissect the ins and outs of the groundbreaking album's fair share of multiple-format releases over its 44-year lifespan (and counting).
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Steely Dan: Gaucho
Mike Mettler  |  Jan 14, 2022
By the time November 1980's Gaucho rolled around, Steely Dan were more than ready to close up shop and take a self-imposed two-decade hiatus. Indeed, Gaucho's sparkly veneer was a fitting then-final coating on the acclaimed jazz-leaning but genre-defying band's first decade, fully encapsulating the dark-humored observational worldview of its principal creators—bassist/ guitarist Walter Becker and keyboardist/vocalist Donald Fagen—to a literal T.
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Music Reviews
Remaster Class: Supertramp: Crime of the Century
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 06, 2020
The third time was truly the charm for Supertramp. After two middling misfires, the British quintet's third LP, September 1974's Crime of the Century, vaulted them into the big leagues where progressive-leaning tendencies met not-so-subversive pop sensibilities head-on. Over the course of eight songs, Supertramp took full advantage of the dynamic range of tracks like "School" (punctuated by multiple piano bursts and yelping schoolchildren), "Bloody Well Right" (its razor-sharp guitar line wafting from back- ground to foreground and back like a talkbox in a tsunami), and the ascendant, power-packed rage of the title track (with a final lyrical twist worthy of the last episode of The Prisoner).
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