The Replacements, ‘Tim,’ and the Rise and Fall of Indie-Rock Morality

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As someone who purchased “Tim,” the Replacements’ 1985 major label debut, on the day it arrived in my local record store, I can say the following with absolute certainty: If the remixed, significantly beefed-up version of the album that dropped last week had been released in 1985, the group would have been crucified by the indie-rock morality police, and it probably would have destroyed their career.

Make no mistake, the new version sounds amazing: The original, produced by the late original Ramones drummer Tommy Erdelyi in a sort of homage to Phil Spector, was a muddled mess, with the instruments blurred together and an indistinct, heavily reverbed sound.

On the new one, which has been greeted with hosannahs by many longtime fans, you can now hear guitar parts and backing vocals that were almost completely inaudible — not to mention the bass, which was completely inaudible — and you can understand, say, 70% of the lyrics instead of half.

The drums still have that tinny mid-‘80s snap, but it’s been dialed back to reasonable levels. For better and maybe sometimes worse, veteran engineer-mixer Ed Stasium has lifted a sonic veil from “Tim,” and although sometimes it’s a little too crisp and crunching, the internet is filled with “This is the way it always should have sounded!” and “Imagine how different our beloved ‘Mats’ career would have been if it had!” Well, the thing those voices either don’t remember or didn’t know is just how judgmental and dogmatic the indie-rock scene of the 1980s was.