Nirvana
(2002 hits set/DGC/Geffen Records/Universal Blu-ray Pure Audio
Disc)/Van Morrison:
Another Glorious Decade Under Review 1977 - 1987
(2015/Chrome Dreams/MVD DVD)
Picture:
X/C+ Sound: B+/C+ Extras: C-/C Main Programs: B+/B-
Now
for a pair of new music releases for big music fans...
Only
previously available on CD, Nirvana,
a 2002 hits set of the great Grunge Rock band has finally been issued
not only on vinyl, but as part of Universal Music's underrated
Blu-ray Pure Audio Disc series that has full albums in three audio
formats on one disc that is far superior to CD versions and most
other versions (yes, including many vinyl editions). The tracks
start with their last recording ever, including...
You
Know You're Right
About
A Girl
Been
A Son
Sliver
Smells
Like Teen Spirit
Come
As You Are
Lithium
In
Bloom
Heart-Shaped
Box
Pennyroyal
Tea
Rape
Me
Dumb
All
Apologies
The
Man Who Sold The World
Most
of the selections are from the Nevermind
and In
Utero
albums, previously issued on Blu-ray audio, with the last two from
their amazing MTV Unplugged performance. Sometimes bashed at the
time, the songs are not only remarkable, they have only appreciated
in importance, value and even proved to be prophetic in dealing with
the issues addressed. Kurt Cobain was an amazing artist and man who
died too soon (we'll leave it at that for this review) and led a band
that became one of the most important of all time.
I
always liked them, but hearing these songs here in such high fidelity
reveals new empathy in Cobain's singing, Krist Novoselic remains one
of the most underrated bassist around and even before moving on to
another band, Dave Grohl is one of the greatest drummers of all time.
This was a trio with chemistry immediately and they only got better
the more they worked together. One cannot help but listen to these
selections without a sense of loss, but they also prove that the Rock
genre was as vital as anything when these songs were cut and though
the genre has taken a beating, is as important a source of music as
ever. If Cobain had survived, I believe we would not hear about Rock
in the past tense as much.
Smells
Like Teen Spirit
remains the great anthem and their big international hit, but bold
masterworks like Rape
Me,
Lithium,
Dumb,
plus the irony of Cobain singing Bowie's Man
Who Sold The World
are as powerful as they ever were and then some. They are alone
reasons to revisit these songs, especially when you can hear them
sounding this amazing.
The
only extra is a solid, illustrated paper foldout with classic liner
notes by David Fricke and other tech information. See more about the
impressive sonics on this disc below.
Van
Morrison: Another Glorious Decade Under Review 1977 - 1987
(2015) is the latest installment in the massive Chrome Dreams series
of rich music documentaries MVD Visual has been distributing since
day one, leaving hardly any stone unturned in telling us the thorough
story of whom and whatever music subject they take on. This time, it
is the fall, return and no necessarily back-to-form second round of
albums from the famous singer from Them who found huge solo success
with hits like Moondance.
The
program, with some very smart music fans, scholars, lovers and people
who worked with the artist talks about a new era of Van Morrison's
work and how his persistent abrasiveness usually ruined any
possibilities of commercial success. At first, the work is in line
with his early best including a surprise appearance at The Band's
last concert filmed by Martin Scorsese as The
Last Waltz
(1978), then he hit the 1980s and like most of the great artists of
the 1960s and 1970s, he ran out of gas and things to say. In this
case, it was explorations of tangential spirituality that made for
not so great music, but releases some fans and critics loved. I
disagree. His output becomes muddled, he becomes cut away from the
madness of the Reagan/Thatcher Era and was never in form again. You
can see this one for yourself, but it is really a highly-detailed
for-fans-only affair and one of my least favorite from the dozens of
Under
Review
releases. It runs just over 90 minutes.
Extras
include text Contributor Bios and at about 17 minutes long, the
featurette Van
Morrison & The Music Press.
Nirvana
has only its menu image and no motion video, though some have argued
there's room on these discs for video (Music Videos?), while the
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Morrison
is just fine for DVD with new HD-recorded interviews, stills and mix
of archival film and video footage that looks good for the format.
Sound
is where the Nirvana
Pure Audio Blu-ray shines, offering lossless 96 kHz/24 bits 2.0
Stereo versions of the entire set in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio), Dolby
TrueHD and PCM, but it is the DTS tracks (as has been the case in
this series) that offers the best clarity, fidelity and detail.
Still, you get all three to compare and the PCM is here when you
don't have a decoder for the other formats. Though some audiophiles
would have liked 5.1 mixes, you would be surprised how great the 2.0
Stereo can actually sound, pretty impressive in all cases though
there is some controversy on the Nevermind
tracks (5 through 10 here) that originally appeared on the Blu-ray
Pure Audio version of that album that they did not sound quite right.
The
vocals might be a little buried in the instruments more than the rest
of the tracks, but it is hard to say if that is the way the album was
mixed or something no one has figured out. Instead, I thought it
would be best to compare to 2.0 Stereo audiophile discs of the same
genre from about the same time. When I listen to these tracks
against the limited edition Super Audio CDs (aka SA-CDs with their
ultra high definition DSD (Direct Stream Digital) sound) of Death Cab
For Cutie's Transatlanticism
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) and Mobile Fidelity's release of
another Geffen Records classic: Weezer's debut, The
Blue Album,
they compare very well. The Cutie album has its clarity and is not
as layered, but the Weezer album is much like the Nevermind
tracks sounding more bass-rich and sometimes taking some of the vocal
space as apparently intended by producer Ric Ocasek. Any complaints
about clarity are limited at best as this is Rock Music! More on
this in the near future.
Other
Universal Blu-ray Pure Audio 2.0 Stereo only album like Tears For
Fears' The
Hurting
and The
Velvet Underground & Nico,
the best those albums have ever sounded, show how good and strong
stereo-only release in this series can be... even as compared to
similar SA-CDs, so we look forward to more gems, 5.1 or not.
The
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Morrison
is fine with mostly talking, but the always-original music also holds
up well enough considering the aged codec.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
