My three favorite albums of 2021 (so far) are all remasters or re-releases. I’ve spent the last two hours listening to The White Stripes. For the third time this week. Maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t fallen for a contemporary musician this deeply. I’d have stick and poke tattoos all over my fingers.
The White Stripe’s generous inclusion of a full live recording of White Blood Cells, Muse’s brilliant Origin of Symmetry remix, and Landscape Tantrums, an unfinished early attempt at The Mars Volta’s seminally insane De-Loused in the Comatorium, have dominated my listening this year. While I concede that the vast majority of music available for listening did not come out this year, I always try to go out of my way to listen to new releases when given the opportunity. But lately, none of it has been appealing to me. I’ve become the answer to “who is this re-release of a 2001 critical acclaimed but commercially neglected album actually for?” They’re for me.
I used to think these were record companies’ attempts to get back into the “New Release” Spotify algorithm. But that’s because I haven’t lived long enough to feel nostalgic for the newly remastered albums. I’ve spent the last ten years of my life dissecting Deloused, and almost twenty years jamming to White Blood Cells. It feels like it’s about time they’ve received some love and acknowledgment. And that’s how I know I’m becoming a snob. Is it really so bad to say “I think this band’s best work was before the Iraq War?” Maybe someday you’ll understand defending The Backstreet Boys from our soon to be Korean Boy Band overlords.