5 out of 5

Label: Discos Peroquébien

Produced by: Jose Guerrero (remastered by)

Generally when reviewing a remaster, if I own the original, I’ll give it a spin first so it’s fresh in my mind for comparison. When I put on Cuello’s Trae Tu Cara, I was instantly caught up in the band’s meaty pop hooks – the fine balancing act between a heavier punk sound and Weezer-like feel good anthems. While the split between those two approaches is a defining aspect of this album and why I initially criticized it, I was also, like, damn, this is a supremely good listen. It hits hard throughout, whether to make you headbang, tap your toe, or both.

When I put on the remaster… I was gutted. Man, it’s like they’d tweaked the levels to turn it all into radio pop, undermining the heavier hitting low-end and taking all the edge off the guitars. The songs were still good, but a significant amount of heart had been leveled out for the sake of accessibility; some of the finer details in the guitars and bass interplay were backrounded for a “rounder” sound.

I then wanted to do a song-by-song comparison, and realized: I had switched my copies. The “original” was the remaster, and vice versa. So yeah, put the narrative straight: the remaster fixes the streamlined sound of the 2015 release, unleashing heft that’s always underpinning the band’s sound, but did start to get kind of studio-smoothed out as the albums went along. Your mileage may vary with that, of course, but to my ears, this makes a near classic record one you can ditch the ‘near’ qualifier from, as I’m truly rocking out to every track on the thing.

No extras, but the remaster gets a perfect rating for doing what I always want a remaster to do: to get me to hear the material anew. And in this case, that anewness also revitalized the album for me, making me revisit Cuello’s catalogue and hope for further remasters.