5 out of 5

Label: Thrill Jockey

Produced by: Greg Norman (recorded by), Josh Bonati (remastered by)

Oh man, this guy gets it. Or, like, he gets it like I get it, which was not the case with Greg Norman’s remix of Fire in Our Throats, which was also remastered by Josh Bonati, also also doing the remaster here… but, uh, without the fiddling to the original, low-end heavy mix from Andrew Schneider, we end up with a version of this album that corrects for the somewhat overly crisp master from John Golden, balancing the levels in a way I think Norman was aiming for, but not at the sacrifice of the damned weight of it all. And I realize that the Norman mix on that album was band-approved, and perhaps if they’d had the same desire / ability to go back to the drawing board they’d do the same for this album, but there’s a George Lucas vibe to that that feels revisionist: these late 00 albums were maybe very much of their time in terms of sound, but they were also made at that time, and so it’s an unavoidable influence. I have always felt that the original mix and masters of Pelican’s first three albums were somewhat uneven, favoring a hardcore sound due to the Hydra Head audience, and cutting off a lot of the nuance once could spot / hear when playing, but that did also serve to build up the band’s sound into something distinctly sludgier and heavier than bands in a similar space.

So, years on, to revisit that with some remove and lift a bit of the omnipresent doom off of the guitars and percussion, it turns City of Echoes into an even more impressive accomplishment: it still rocks to hell and back, but it feels even more sprightly on its feet, and actually allows more edge into the production, whereas before it’d all been blunted in a way to kind of present a wall of sound, but ultimately just dulled some of its explosiveness. Every moment gets a step up: the acoustic bits aren’t reverbed unto oblivion; the beat drops kill; and the little percussive and instrumental touches aren’t buried in the noise, but instead positively add to it.

The bonuses are also fantastic: odds and ends such as the Pink Mammoth single (with a completely worthwhile Prefuse 73 mix of City’s ‘End of Seasons’ – another example of someone “getting it,” and not tossing out the Pelican with the remix); the plus-drums version of ‘Winds With Hands’ from a Hydra Head comp; and three demo tracks that are significantly different enough from their on-album versions to merit their inclusions.

The Fire remix was worth it in order to hear how much of a difference it could make, but it’s not a version of the experience I ever want to revisit beyond curiosity. City of Echoes’ remaster, meanwhile, almost instantly became the definitive version for me; this is how I always wanted to hear this album.

Given that there’s an extra LP in this set we have some new art, but otherwise, the previously existing art looks all to have been kept the same, down to the vinyl labels.