4 out of 5

Label: Iodine Records

Produced by: Jack Shirley (remastered by)

A packed reissue. Even without the extras of the deluxe edition, Jack Shirley’s remaster and a fun rejigger of the original artwork literally (and audibly) puts a shiny new package on an already shiny album. Add in those extras, and this is worth the double dip.

Original review of the main album content is here; as usual with when I review rereleases, I’m more qualifying the value of the new deal. So: overall, there’s the aforementioned remaster and artwork; the deluxe edition brings in some B-sides from the original sessions that were part of the previous reissue / singles, some oddball tracks that have appeared on comps and / or The First Ten Years sets, an Accidental Gentleman track acoustic take, and some demos. While that marks the first vinyl appearance of some of those bits and bobs, you can probably see that there’s a bit of a smorgasbord of stuff happening there, and that’s the docking of a star – you definitely lose the thread of what Iodine Records was going for past the B-sides and demos, and the vibe is filling out the runtime. The tracks sound good and are all quality, it’s just a very random mix that doesn’t immediately dawn on me as something to dig out of my collection and listen to. Themeing a bit more around the album itself could’ve tied the listen together. (At the same time, I do appreciate the label giving us a full second LP over doing a blank side with an engraving or something.)

Remasters are always going to be subjectively valuable, though I at least think they can be assessed on vision: as in, can I tell if the band / remasterer / remixer had an m.o. that somewhat aligns with the band’s / album’s sound, and can I actually hear that play out? In this case, I go back and forth on some specific elements being punched up – because this is such a 2000s pop-punk album, the “rounder” guitars on the original kind of just make sense – I do think Shirley did an amazing job of making the extra studio bells and whistles producer Paul Q. Kolderie encouraged / allowed sound so much more seamless than before, when they were honestly a bit ill-fitting. And the punch ups, my sometimes-quibbles aside, sound so damn good – bright, powerful – and clearly intended for the wax format.

Finally, I don’t think the regular version of this reissue comes with the liner notes from Travis Shettel, which are a nice read. Nothing life changing, but it adds to the sense of history of the release and the passion of the re-presentation and of the band in general.