Neil Young & Pearl Jam - Mirror Ball & Mirror Ball Live Dublin Vinyl

So what’s new about the Mirror Ball in this vinyl box set? 

The four songs John Hanlon remixed are “I’m the Ocean,” “Big Green Country,” “Truth Be Known,” and “Throw Your Hatred Down,” and they sound very, very subtly different from the originals. Young’s vocals were famously buried on Mirror Ball, and Hanlon has extracted them for more legibility and nuance; the drums have a slightly different character, and the three-guitar morass of Young, Stone Gossard, and Mike McCready takes on a minutely different grain and luster. But surprisingly, there are noticeable differences beyond those four songs. “Song X” and “Act of Love” are presented in alternate mixes as well, with certain vocal refrains that are either absent (“Song X” is missing its first two choruses of “hey-ho, away we go”) or appear early (the titular refrain for “Act of Love” comes in one verse sooner than it used to). 

And “Peace of Love” now bears an extended ending, with more than a minute and a half of abstract guitar feedback that’s never been heard before. I think the rest of “Peace and Love” might be a different mix, too, but I can’t be positive about that, nor can I say for sure whether anything else in the remaining tracks has changed. “Downtown” sounds the same to my ears, but “Scenery” is such a thick, dense stew that subtle mix changes would be difficult to pinpoint. The two remaining songs, “What Happened Yesterday” and “Fallen Angel,” feature just Young’s voice and pump organ, so any minor mixing shifts to those would be negligible.

In short, this Mirror Ball is not exactly the Mirror Ball you grew up with. 

The differences—in both the new Hanlon remixes and in the unadvertised alternate mixes, which if I had to guess were made by producer Brendan O’Brien during the 1995 sessions and left forgotten on the unused analog assembly reels—may jump out to the devoted who know this album back to front. But I think most people will either not notice them or be more than satisfied with their richness and fullness.

Cutting from analog slightly softens the heavy electric tone of the three-guitar ensemble and marginally strips some of the power out of Jack Irons’s propulsive drums. After spending entirely too much time thinking about it, I’m currently of the mind that the original Mirror Ball’s thick, chewy sound has a bit more fire to it, but the difference is so small that I expect I could just as easily find things I like better about the 2025 version in a future listen.