sleater-kinney modern girl

ii44 wrote:

Yes, yes, I got that but it's LOUD to the point that if I have my player on random I have to grab the switch and turn it down. Records that are like that sound bad.

double post

justam wrote:

Yeah, but there's a precedent for that in punk rock. I can remember songs by the Sex Pistols (I think?) that started so soft the first time you played the record you'd turn it way up and then, LOW AND BELHOLD THE DAMN SONG WOULD REALLY START AND IT WAS [size=+2]SO FUCKING LOUD!!!!!!!![/size]

I'm not talking about how heavy the music is or how much distortion they're playing with, I'm talking about the way the CD was mastered: loud as is loudness wars. For example, Soundgarden has nice quiet CDs; this is the opposite. It's far and away the loudest disc I own, even louder than Californication.

Rhinocerous Surprise wrote:

I think what we're trying to say is that it wasn't part of the loudness war - it was a genuine stylistic choice. But I can respect that you don't like that choice.

That surprises me. I love the songs but I hate the production. It's really taxing on the ears.

ii44 wrote:

That surprises me. I love the songs but I hate the production. It's really taxing on the ears.

For me, it's impossible to separate the songs from the production - that bleeding-ear volume is as much a part of The Fox as Corin's "Land ho". The steadily building distortions on Modern Girl reflect the narrator's worldview crumbling around her as much as the lyrics do.

The sad part is, they probably would have found a glorious medium between The Woods and One Beat if they had made one more record.

ii44 wrote:

I'm not talking about how heavy the music is or how much distortion they're playing with, I'm talking about the way the CD was mastered: loud as is loudness wars. For example, Soundgarden has nice quiet CDs; this is the opposite. It's far and away the loudest disc I own, even louder than Californication.

Funny, I've listened to The Woods many times, I don't hear it being a casualty of the Loudness Wars, as you put it. There's distortion, but it's natural distortion; I believe the entire album was made using analog equipment. I hear overdriven amps, not digital distortion. When I think of the loudness wars, I think of clipping and no differentiation between instruments; I hear none of that in The Woods; it's a loud and very abrasive rock record, but it doesn't grate on me in the sense that Magic, Avocado, and Accelerate by R.E.M. Those are just digitally mastered to compete with rock radio. I don't hear that in The Woods.

digster wrote:

Funny, I've listened to The Woods many times, I don't hear it being a casualty of the Loudness Wars, as you put it. There's distortion, but it's natural distortion; I believe the entire album was made using analog equipment. I hear overdriven amps, not digital distortion. When I think of the loudness wars, I think of clipping and no differentiation between instruments; I hear none of that in The Woods; it's a loud and very abrasive rock record, but it doesn't grate on me in the sense that Magic, Avocado, and Accelerate by R.E.M. Those are just digitally mastered to compete with rock radio. I don't hear that in The Woods.

Badmotorfinger is a loud abrasive rock record, and it's one of the quietest I own. I'd argue that it was first distorted for artistic reasons, and then loudened afterwards. Not that I'm an expert, I'd love to know why it actually sounds this way.