Sugar’s Copper Blue has been remastered and released in the ubiquitous deluxe packaging with extra tracks:

Remasters and deluxe editions are usually cynical marketing exercises to get fans to pay for the same album twice.

I only found out how bad the original mastering was when I went nostalgia shopping in HMV a few years ago. Listening on the original tape through a crappy stereo covered a multitude of sins, which were now revealed – a compressed flat and muddy sound with drowned-out vocals.

A remastering couldn’t have made it much worse, and in fact it’s a huge improvement over the original – better dynamics¹, clearer vocals. The extra tracks are great and the packaging is nice too.

Even more awesome, Bob Mould is touring this year and performing Copper Blue in its entirety (and supporting the Foo Fighters in Prague and Italy)!

1. Curiously my dynamic range tool shows the wav files of the original have greater dynamic range than the equivalent remasters – which is contrary to received wisdom from loudness war opponents. Indeed there are arguments that the loudness war isn’t decreasing dynamic range – though that doesn’t explain why an album measured with lower DR would sound better. Either there’s something up with my measuring tool, or there’s more to good sound than just DR.