3 out of 5

Label: Music on Vinyl

Produced by: Ted Niceley

While it’s awesome to now have the full set of Tripping Daisy albums available on vinyl (assuming you weren’t super cool and bought the original Island pressing) – it’s firstly interesting that this one did not come through Good Records – maybe it doesn’t matter, but no wild color variants and superficially it’s a bit more corporate feeling – it secondly seems to align with the creeping feeling that these albums perhaps weren’t “made” for vinyl. Not that they don’t sound good that way (some have benefitted from the translation), but this album arrived in a very CD age, and it has a very made-for-CD sound: bright and punchy and thick. So I can’t say the wax version gains anything, and it’s possible it makes some limitations more inherent – the peaks of album closer “Prick,” for example, feel a bit weaker in this format, and the mastering has a similar kind of ceiling at other points.

The rating represents the packaging, which is complete, and the pressing, which is accurate – likely the issue mentioned is part of the Island pressing also – but is additionally meant to reflect that this feels like a collector’s thing for sure, as the CD is my preferred edition.