Phew, I’ve become increasingly more confused about last weeks TPOE 2009 reissue announcement, and also since listening to the ‘version’ of
A Funny Thing on myspace.
I’ve been longing to experience TPOE afresh, and not played any of it in a long time having been very impressed by the version of
Cities Of Light on last years Giimmer, I wanted to wait for the “complete” remix of an album that now I must have only imagined was happening.
I just don’t understand why the 7 tracks that have not been remixed would therefore equal out to why any of the album needed to be remastered/re-issued in the first place. From my (uninformed) point of view I never had any ‘technical’ problem with its quality, just rather more the art or intention behind the manner of some of the compositions.
TPOE as an album is one of those affairs that I really want to fall in love with completely, and Its hard not to be responsive to the promise it contains, but I always used to stumble over one or two little things. Don’t get me wrong here, as an album its concept works beautifully and it has some undeniably atmospheric and romantic tracks:
When It Rains, Quiet City, and
Camera (to name a few), but some of the vocal parts throughout in places grate a little for me (though its surprising how quickly I stopped noticing that) and I would still welcome an overall ‘revisiting’ of the work.
When I listened to
A Funny Thing on myspace last week, and this was before reading the announcement that there were only four remixed tracks, I genuinely thought that this particular track had actually been remixed, it sounded fantastic, so much better than I remembered, certainly more poignant and less maudlin (as I may have said in a post last year). It just goes to show how things can ‘mature’ more positively on the mind over the passage of time, or maybe listening to it through earphones brought out more subtleties, and an intimacy in the song for me that I’d failed to notice, (previously I would have been listening to it from across the other side of a room).
So, why should I now be excited at the 2009 reissue? has anything at all been done to the other 7 tracks, no compositional changes obviously, but has a vocal part been brought forward or pushed back even slightly, does that constitute as a ‘remix’ or just a plain old 'remaster'. Why am I buying TPOE for only 4 reworked tracks, plus an extra disc to duplicate and make redundant the one I already have? also, surely John might have at least wanted to consider taking the opportunity to remix the music to
Invisible Women 
