Tom Dunne: Five classic albums you should really listen to on CD
Five albums that really showed what a great format CD is.
Fans of CDs, who since the news of their revival broke, have been coming out of the woodwork in droves, will be relieved to hear the humble discs' re-acceptance into society continues apace.
In some circles, it has been referred to as “the punkiest of formats”. No one knows what this means, but as someone who owns thousands of them, I’ll take it.
It has, in our house, inspired ‘CD evenings'. These are exactly like the previous ‘vinyl evenings’ but with considerably less getting up and down. And, just like the vinyl evenings, have inspired numerous gasps of, “I’ve never heard music sound so good.”
Our enjoyment had been tempered somewhat by an article in which men of a certain age who love CDs were referred to as 'Media Dads'. I initially found this funny. “How do they even know I work in the media?,” I asked, until it was explained to me that they didn’t, and it didn’t refer just to me specifically.
No, a ‘media dad’ is a dad who is very much engaged, or possibly even obsessed, by what media his music is on, be it vinyl, CD or streaming. I know no such man. Honestly, the media, do they ever rest?
That said, there are powerful reasons why you should enjoy your CDs, and to be honest, I’m not happy for you to continue in life until you’re familiar with them. So sit down, don’t try to leave, I’ve locked the doors anyway, and let me tell you why CDs sound so amazing and which ones are the best to listen to.
Vinyl, although a medium that is so good we really don’t deserve it, was actually a little limited in the amount of bass and treble it could reproduce. The CD removed all such limits and its arrival ushered in a new breed of producer eager to astound listeners with rumbling bottom end, and crystal clear high frequencies.
In came names like Brian Eno (U2, Talking Heads), Steve Lilywhite (The Pogues, U2, XTC, Smiths), Rick Rubin (Run DMC, Beastie Boys), and Bob Clearmountain (Simple Minds, Bowie, Bruce).
Rubin in particular stands out for me. His work with The Beasties and Red Hot Chile Peppers was stunning, but his ideas for the American Recordings with Johnny Cash were inspired. Not without reason did people start to say that the four most important words in music were “Produced by Rick Rubin”.
This was a generation picking up from where Brian Wilson and George Martin left off. Not so much in terms of the material, but in terms of how it sounded, was arranged, put together, and mixed. The sound palate had never before been able to accommodate such colour.
The buzzword was DDD, which meant an album was digitally recorded, digitally mastered and available on a digital format, the CD. By the 1990s as producers got used to their new digital toys, the sounds produced, the clarity, the definition was becoming jaw-dropping. So, may I recommend:
Produced by Bruce Fairbairn, this is a startlingly good-sounding CD. ‘Jamie’s Got a Gun,’ in particular: the vocal sound, the explosion of the snare, the various effects. It is a CD symphony. Fairbairn also produced AC/DC’s Thunderstruck, a song used to test PA systems the world over.
It’s impossible to imagine this album without the kind of bass that makes cups fall from tables. It establishes a kind of bass universe over which and within great vocalists soar. It seems cliched to say, but we had honestly heard nothing like it before.
It took that same bottom end, massive PA systems, and songs like Personal Jesus to really capture that dark, powerful, machine-like world of Depeche Mode.
A certain degree of Nirvana’s charm was based on the Pixies' quiet/loud approach. The quiet was great, but the loudness, that speaker-busting, CD degree of loud, defined 1991.
Possibly the point at which studio production was beginning to go just a little too far. It cost too much, it took too long but it still sounds like the record of the Gods.
- Crowded House – Woodface
- Air – Moon Safari
- Peter Gabriel – So
- REM - Automatic for the People
- U2 - Achtung Baby
- Johnny Cash – American IV: The Man Comes Around
- and Music, the Madonna album produced by Mirwais
