IM pretty certain they just wanted the songs to sound as aggressive as possible. This was after the canadian tour, the failed VFC tour, and int he midst of the Iraq war.

I think that was their thought process. Just make it sound pushed to the limit and as aggressive as possible.

This actually sounds right.

Their angst worked in the early years, but it was through their writing and playing styles. Trying to force an aggressive sound through mixing/mastering is not ideal. These latest mixes/masters are proof of that.

I also remember an interview around the time and ed was talking about ho floored he was with sleater kinney "the woods" and how that would just come blaring through the speakers and rattled them. I think he wanted that as well.

This makes a lot of sense actually.

(That this may be why they mastered it the way they did, not that they were right to do so )

The story I heard was Ed heard The Woods and wanted it "loud like that".

should have kept reading

idiot

The Woods is a much better sounding record than S/T.

The aggressive sound of The Woods was the result of discussions between Sleater-Kinney and producer Dave Fridmann who aimed for it (as the band had opened for PJ in big venues in 2003 and wanted to fill that space): the album was then recorded, mixed and mastered with that purpose. It is loud, but coherent with the songs.

For Avocado, if PJ actually intended to be loud, it seems they pushed all knobs to the max for the mastering phase only, as Adam Kasper's mix is actually subtle, as heard with the Spotify mastering. It is a huge failure if they wanted to get a bigger sound with the 2006 mastering.

Or it was just the period of loudness war (I think Death Magnetic from Metallica in 2008 was the tipping point, and the issue became more well known for casual listeners), and the band did not double-check the mastering result: during the recording period, I picture them spending hours working on the mixes with Adam Kasper, listening with top of the art material an speakers, and be happy with the final outputs. But when it went to mastering, I guess the band had moved to other things (preparation of promotion, touring, etc.), as unfortunately I think they did not anticipate/know the impact it could have of the final album available in stores.

As previously read here about vinyls, the band seems more interested in records as objects rather than sound quality, they do not seem involved in the quality process: the mastering of Avocado is a good illustration, and having Brendan O'Brien remixing the album makes me wonder if they have missed the point regarding the sound issue of this album.

I think this is much more likely than any kind of conscious intent to ape The Woods or to achieve a particularly aggressive sound. I'd be surprised if the band had any input into the mastering besides saying "yeah, fine, whatever" when the reference CDs came out to be approved. It's just a very of-the-moment circa 2006 mastering, unfortunately.


Based on the records I've heard that he's been involved in over the last few years, I fear Brendan's new mix is simply going to a different kind of terrible.

it hasnt aged well, but it felt fresh and a powerful response to the generally perceived (at the time) shortcomings of binaural (closed off and distant) and Riot Act (passive). it was angry, fiery, immediate, aggressive, and what was needed in the moment. the problem arises when the moment passes and you are left with songs produced for a context and time that has passed. S/T (the formal mix) works best as a historical document. this spotify mix works better as a set of songs for any seaaon.

This is how I feel. I remember listening to it the first time and thinking, this is loud and heavy and I love it.

I had the most visceral reaction I've ever had to a PJ song the first time I heard World Wide Suicide for exactly that reason. It was everything I needed Riot Act to be and wasn't.

That thought about Eddie wanting to emulate The Woods is pretty enlightening, I think. He may have wanted to mirror that approach, but I think the reason that works there is cause that collection of songs is pretty brutal and heavy, at least in comparison to the rest of that band's works. S/T is a bunch of somewhat conventional PJ songs unnecessarily pushed into the red; it's interesting that for all the promotion of it being their big heavy rock record, that isn't really maintained past the first three or four tracks. Which is a shame, cause I think overall those are the strongest tracks besides Parachutes.

There was also an old Ed interview -- I think it may have been in McSweeney's? -- in which one of the S-K girls (either Carrie or Corin is interviewing Ed) mentions that he listens to music very loudly. I'm guessing that A) he wanted his record to sound like The Woods, B) his ears are shot, and C) Ed makes the final call on that stuff.

yeah, i don't think these guys are anything close to audiophiles. i don't know why a lot of us assumed they were (including myself). maybe just bc they advocated for vinyl for so long? but i can count on 6 hands how many people i personally know who are "into vinyl", but play it on one of those shitty Crosley record players. that's who Ed is, probably. loves the romantic idea of vinyl, but doesn't understand its capabilities. and that's fine. i have no problem with that at all. i just wish they hired people who could educate them about the different subtleties of mastering a record

They did hire someone who could educate them. His name was Tchad Blake. He didn't last long.

My reaction to first hearing the album was that an era had ended. Binaural was an experiment that they gave up on too soon, but this was the first record where they aimed at being Pearl Jam and came up embarrassingly short. "We've still got it," they announced, as they relentlessly demonstrated otherwise...and it's baffling the degree to which that "failure" now appears to have been good performances hidden by bad sound.

Ed's low end sounded like he had a head cold. Not, it turns out, because his voice had actually changed that much between 2002 and 2006, but because the smashed-up mastering robbed the vocals of room to live. His most resonant frequencies were overwhelmed while his least flattering were carried over. On songs like Life Wasted, his upper register sounded thin, teary-eyed, and almost desperately exerted, because the middles that gave it muscle, shape, and heart were stolen away by guitar tones that sounded like a raw hatred of all human hearing. On Marker, the background singing in the chorus swamped the lead vocal's frequencies until it was left sounding like pitchy mud. On Comatose, the gravel carried through so much more completely than the actual core voice that it sounded overdone. Less like a growl, and more like a very past-its-prime sore throat.

Basically, Ed sounded awful...and the emotion of his delivery was often sacrificed by the punishing treatment of the mix.

The musical performances, meanwhile, sounded meathead-direct. Play it hard and fast, and never mind the bollocks. The band that used to take pretty unaccomplished, or even embarrassing writing (Torture from you to me!) and turn it into cathartic emotion sounded like hurried professionals with better things to do (Matt and Mike notwithstanding). Lots of flashy rockstar moments went by, but the performances never felt like they really lived up to the writing. For a band that had just made *Riot Act* to sound so....robotic, maybe?...was a system shock.

None of that rings true, with the new mix. It has space and atmosphere, drama and resolution. Every part is well captured. We've all heard albums ruined by bad production or mastering, and heard some get "repaired" or revealed. New remixes come out. Bootlegs of unmastered recordings pop up. Etc. I've never heard one where the successes and the heart of a record were so brutally undercut by such a simple, simple process before.

There are too many tiny exposures in this mix to even track, but there's a squeal of guitar decoration from 0:55-1:10 in Big Wave, coming out of the left side, that I really, really enjoy.