It’s barely an exaggeration to say that Stasium’s new mix is like hearing Tim for the first time. The mix on Tim often thwarts that feeling of intimacy and immediacy.Ĭarl Wilson The Olivia Rodrigo–Taylor Swift “Beef” Is Really About Something Deeper Read More Few rock bands embodied the primal rock-’n’-roll thrill of a bunch of lovable louts in a room together blasting their way to glory more powerfully than the Replacements at their best. Much of the album sounds both cavernous and oddly cloistered, as though the musicians are standing hundreds of feet apart from each other, encased in Magneto prisons of cheap plexiglass. Mars’ drums sound washed-out and muffled, Tommy Stinson’s bass work is often nearly inaudible, the electric guitars sound touch-less and underdefined while the acoustic guitars sound like they’re being played with pieces of tinfoil. The end product leaves a lot to be desired. As Mehr notes, the producer deployed a strange excess of digital reverb throughout the album, while also pursuing an aggressively monaural aesthetic that tended to flatten out any sense of sonic dimension. Erdelyi’s work on Tim is frankly baffling, a set of sonic decisions that often seem either careless or excessively fussed-over. Its mix has long been a source of frustration, among the band members themselves and among fans, including the many of them who’ve found their way to the album in the decades since its release. To name just two monumental examples, the Clash’s self-titled debut and Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded are two of the greatest albums ever made and both sound pretty amateurish, their sonic haphazardness only enhancing their breakneck insurgency. There are plenty of albums whose mixes aren’t conventionally polished but where that quality is inseparable from their fundamental character, part and parcel of what makes us love them. This isn’t to say that the songs weren’t incredible, or that the band didn’t play the absolute hell out of them, but rather the album’s overall sonic assemblage-Erdelyi’s mix, in recording parlance-just sounded off. (Though again, then they would have been something other than the Replacements.)īut there was also the matter that Tim didn’t sound very good. If the Replacements had played ball with the promotional efforts, if they hadn’t pissed off a national TV network, if they’d just had their collective shit together a bit more, maybe the album would have done better. 192 on the Billboard album chart, nowhere near what Sire or the band had hoped for. Tim sold only 75,000 copies and peaked at No. (In fairness, Sire should have seen that one coming.) A coveted slot on Saturday Night Live devolved into catastrophe when Westerberg said “ Come on, fucker” into a live mic, enraging Lorne Michaels and ensuring that the band’s first SNL appearance would be their last. The promotional push for Tim was chaotic at best: The ’Mats had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making a video for “Bastards of Young,” the hilarious minimalism of which all but assured it wouldn’t see the light of day on MTV. ( Tim would be the final Replacements album that Stinson would play on he died of complications from drug use in 1995.) The band’s own self-destructive tendencies, the stuff of legend even before they’d signed to Sire, had recently surfaced at a disastrously drunk CBGB’s gig in late 1984 where they’d seemingly alienated every music-biz suit in New York City. Behind the scenes, the group felt the weight of newfound exposure and expectations, while guitarist Bob Stinson was struggling with substance abuse, mental health, and his own diminishing role in the band he’d founded. It finally sounds like four guys in a room together, and you’re there too.Īnd yet in true Replacements fashion, the wheels were already coming off. It also goes a long way toward redressing many of the more notorious aspects of the album’s original mix, long one of the more contested and controversial facets of Replacements lore. The Stasium mix is a watershed, the rare act of musical revision that refreshes its object in ways that should thrill diehard fans while also serving as a gorgeous welcome ’Mat for listeners experiencing this music for the first time. But the true star of this show is a brand-new mix of the album by renowned engineer Ed Stasium. 22, Rhino will release Tim: Let It Bleed Edition, a four-disc set that includes a trove of mostly unreleased alternate takes and demos, a 1986 concert recording from Chicago’s Cabaret Metro, and a book-length set of liner notes by Bob Mehr, author of 2016’s exquisite Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements.

Perhaps no such point looms larger than Tim, the Replacements’ 1985 major-label debut that flopped on arrival despite containing a decent handful of some of the best rock ’n’ roll songs ever written.

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