When Dylan emerged from his cocoon with John Wesley Harding in late 1967, he seemingly wiped away the
psychedelic excesses he helped set in motion with Blonde on Blonde instantaneously. One of the first major new bands
to define the Dylan-provoked “return to roots” movement was The Band. However,
the group was never as simple as their Antebellum South image implied.
First of all, they weren’t really a new band—they’d been
Dylan’s backing band and collaborators for well over a year—and only one member
of the group hailed from the American South. The rest were Ontario boys. The
music on their debut album, Music from
Big Pink, similarly defies dismissive pigeonholing. While John Wesley Harding and the eponymous
debut by Creedence Clearwater Revival— that other misleadingly located face of
new Americana— are as stripped to the bones as Sgt. Pepper’s or Days of
Future Past are lavishly over-dressed, Music
from Big Pink is a complex production full of small details that bring its sepia-hued snapshot of a dead world to vivid life. Eerily echoed backing
vocals or organ lines skid out of the deep background. Trippy, leslied
guitar lines creak in the foreground. Most intricate of all is The Band’s
gorgeous loose-weave harmonies.
These fine details have never popped more than they do on
the new, remixed edition of Music from
Big Pink. The original mix sounds flat in comparison, though the new mix
retains the original’s warmth, crunchiness, and antique atmosphere. Mastering
is significantly louder, though at least in its vinyl incarnation, it doesn’t
sound excessively loud. That 180-gram vinyl edition is presented as a double-LP
set with both discs spinning at 45rpm.
For its fiftieth anniversary, Music from Big Pink is also available as a CD Super Deluxe box set
and a pink vinyl edition.
