3 out of 5
Label: Temporary Residence
Produced by: James Plotkin (remastered by)
Reviews are subjective, though you can start from a principle of: is this good? and tack on some modifiers – good for the genre; good for the band; and so on – and at least have a base from which you’re working. Reviewing remasters is also subjective, but, like, doubly so, because now your modifiers stack on top of those modifiers – is this a good remaster… compared to the original master? Compared to the band’s current work? – and I really start to lose track of what I’m trying to measure without boiling it down to just whether I like it or not.
At the very least, a starting point for reviewing the 20th anniversary remaster of Settle Down City had me exited: it’s absolutely the outlier in the YW catalogue in terms of their sound (you can hear ’em, but it’s a lot closer to their Breather Resist sound than the more paced, minimalist hardcore to come), and was recorded at a time that digital was kind of still de facto – 2006, when CDs were dying and streaming was the way to go – and louder and low-end buzzy tended to be the name of the sound game for heavy music. Settle Down fit that.
A 20th anniversary is a good reason for a revisit, but what’s the reason for the remaster? James Plotkin is definitely an interesting choice, but, well, I tend to associate him with music that is rather suited to that digital gloss: tight, mechanical, not a lot of room, a buzzy low-end – stuff I associate with this album already. Certainly he’s an old hand in the studio, though, so I’m sure he’s up to whatever the task was for this, but that’s where I’m left rather high and dry by the end result, because I can’t really tell what the the task was. I’m sure there were conversations with the band, but I do wonder if there was an actual need, like the band wasn’t happy with the original recording, etcetera. Otherwise, I sense that a lack of motivation / direction results in the remaster I’m hearing, which attempts to approximate the more modern YW sound (In And Out Of Youth And Lightness / Easy Pain era) with this punky and harsh recording, and, it’s interesting, definitely dialing down some of the intensity in favor of clearer guitars – fleshing out the midrange some – but otherwise, man, it just kind of deflates the experience. I’ll get a lil’ cute and say that it’s like a settled down version of Settle Down City.
You get a new cover (though mimicking a 2014 LP edition, to my eye) and I appreciate the way the LP labels made use of some of the original vinyl’s labels, plus a Plotkin-remastered bonus track from the original sessions – which is definitely not a throwaway, and you can hear some of the then-forthcoming Old Wounds vibes in it, suggesting why it might’ve not fit the sequencing – but also no additional liner notes to give us the context I’m grousing about above: like if I had some explainer for what the band / Plotkin was going for, maybe I wouldn’t be able to minimize it as much as I am.
In short, I’m glad to hear what this album sounds like through this (assumed) POV, and it’s possible that fans who skipped this one when it came out may prefer the toned down take. But I think the eras YW went through are tied to how those albums were produced, and the very raw, butt-kicking sound of Settle Down is part of what made it so arresting at the time, even if I ultimately became a diehard follower moreso thanks to the following album.
