So I’ve been on a Tom Waits mini-bender of late, partially inspired by the reissuing of remastered editions of his albums for Island records: Swordfish Trombones, Rain Dogs, Frank’s Wild Years, The Black Rider, etc. I was extremely curious to hear how the new versions sounded because I always thought the originals sounded a bit like all the details in the music sometimes got lost. At one point I owned Beautiful Maladies: The Island Years compilation on CD, which I always felt sounded muddied. It was mastered really low and mix just wasn’t clean. I thought it sounded like garbage. I don’t own it anymore. The blurb on Amazon pitches the remaster of Rain Dogs like this: ”The album is newly remastered for the first time ever from the original ½ inch flat master tape and personally overseen by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. Mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering under the guidance of Waits’ longtime audio engineer, Karl Derfler.” That sounds pretty fancy. I mean it was personally overseen by Waits and Brennan themselves. It must be perfection. I was pretty stoked to hear what the music should be.

I knew I wasn’t going to get the LP version. A) $40. B) I had heard a lot of reviews in various places that said how the pressings were garbage. C) I still love me some CDs, as a prior post will attest to. I decided to buy the new remastered copy of Frank’s Wild Years, since I had an old CD version of it to compare to. (I also bought a copy of The Black Rider because I didn’t have it, but it was not part of this test since I didn’t have anything to compare it to.) I put each copy of Frank’s Wild Years into my 5 disc changer and ran them through my pretty decent but far from audiophile stereo system. I had my wife—who has a doctorate in music— joined St. Christopher and came along for the ride.

I played the same parts of a few different songs, not telling her which version was which. Our unanimous decision as to the superior sounding version? The original. Easily. No question. We were quite surprised. Even though I still think it’s a bit muddy, there are more details heard in the original. The main difference in the remastered version is that Waits’ vocals are higher up in the mix and more prominent. This leads me to wonder: what listening experience was the remaster done for? Was it for people primarily listening on their headphones? For audiophiles with $20k speakers? Car speakers connected to a phone via bluetooth? For streaming on computers and tablets? Each of these would likely demand a different approach, and perhaps Frank’s Wild Years and the others were remastered for someone who is not primarily listening to them in a similar way to me.

What I will say is from a packaging standpoint is that the new versions are far superior. The cardboard digipack replicates a gatefold LP in a much more pleasing way than the original CD does. As an object the new versions are great.

I can’t speak to what the other remastered versions of what the Island discs sound like, but if the remastering job is similar to my copy of Frank’s Wild Years—and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be—then for me it was kind of a downer and a missed opportunity. That being said, I still have holes in my Waits collection, so unless I find Rain Dogs or Bone Machine for a dollar at a thrift store, I’ll go ahead and gladly pick up the remastered edition. I also don’t have any quibbles with the way The Black Rider sounds. The new Frank doesn’t sound bad, it just didn’t deliver on my hopes and dreams. At some point though it doesn’t matter because the music transcends the mastering job—it’s just that good and bonkers and absurd where a little bit of muddied sound doesn’t matter a whole lot. I was just hoping for something a bit crisper.