Every couple of months I rediscover and revisit old music that I've already discovered and revisited countless times. I'll go through all of a band's albums, read every single solitary review or tidbit about them, and then begin calling people and spreading the word about this band that they "must hear". This can go on for as little as a week, or, in extreme cases, a year or two.[1]
The cyclical nature of music obsession is not a new phenomenon. However, with respect to this album, "Magnified", it was important long before I had ever even discovered it.
In the years between 2002 and 2004, my obsessive web-scouring for information about whatever band I was rediscovering at the time[2] often led me to an unmemorable website with a posting by some unmemorable music guy,which simply declared, "Failure is better than Nirvana". I must have come across this same post 3 or 4 times before I finally decided to give the band a listen.
The legitimacy of the argument that Nirvana's creative output pales in comparison to little-known Failure's is pretty difficult to make in the face of the disparate number of millions of records sold between the two bands. It's like comparing apples and oranges that happen to taste pretty similar: the vast majority of people will still prefer apples.
Granted, upon listening to Failure, it became (to me, at least) a believable, even reasonable, argument to make. It wasn't so much like apples and oranges anymore; now it was more like, "If only the Rockets and Bulls had been able to face each other in the Finals, then we'd know who the true ruler of 90s basketball was.”[3]
To the paltry number of people who still consider Failure relevant, the band was known not only for it's we-took-what-Nirvana-did-and-made-it-good style, but also for Ken Andrews' prowess as a producer and sound engineer.
And the big issue (apparently) has always been whether digital is better than analog. Though one has to acknowledge that some modern rock bands care about the actual process of recording their music,[4] I have the feeling that a news article like the one shown above is useless to most bands, as most bands are either (a) just starting out and have to take what they get, which in this day and age is digital, or (b) are high-profile bands who rely on shiny production to make money off their aurally numbed listeners.
Regardless of your loyalties in this debate, "Magnified" by Failure makes a pretty good case that digital is legitimate. Though the same cannot be said for the bands subsequent album, Fantastic Planet (which sounds like a digital poop, but has proficient songwriting and is a good album in its own right), and the vast majority of Ken Andrews' production credits,[5] with the exception of Tenacious D’s first album.[6] While these recordings are not bad recordings, they, like “Fantastic Planet”, fail to make Andrews’ case.
“Magnified” is a different story. Its influence, though subconscious, is well documented by Tool’s mid-90s praises of the album (as well as Maynard James Keenan's affinity for Ken Andrews' songwriting talent) and the advances in sound quality that the production achieved.
Even though there aren’t many, if any, bells and whistles or sonic manipulation inserted into the recording, it sounds wide-open and vast. It sounds diegetic, but not live. But it doesn’t sound like it was recorded in a pristine studio either. This album achieves an impeccable balance between how rock n’ roll should sound (raw) and what it should do (engage).
Today, for better or worse, Failure has won. As implied by the Wired Science story, analog is not very popular anymore. For the reasons mentioned above, most modern musicians either don’t care or don’t understand the differences between analog and digital. However, if they’d listen to both "In Utero" and "Magnified", the differences would be clear.
What would I choose? Well, if it’s between In Utero and Magnified, I’m going with Magnified. But then again, it isn’t 1994. Nowadays I’d go with analog. If I was an established musician, my persona would be pretentious; I’d tell Pitchfork Media that I’m very hands-on in the recording process, and prefer analog because it has a warmer sound. In spite of this, I’d like to believe that the type of recording I use would be appropriately calibrated to the quality of the music I am writing, which is why I’d choose “Magnified”. However, I'd only like to believe this; it probably isn't true.
And maybe I’m just not a huge Nirvana fan; "In Utero" has always bored me. I’m clearly not biased in favor of Nirvana, because I’ve never been big on any of their music.
But maybe this is a bad thing. My view of Nirvana as a band that spawned an entire movement of shitty modern rock has overshadowed the more appropriate view of them as a band that sold millions and millions of records because they were very good.
And for that matter, did they really spawn such shitty music? Maybe I can hold “Magnified” partially responsible. Maybe post-grunge music wouldn’t sound so hokey if these guys were recording with analog.
[1] This is often contingent on the size of the band's catalog. While Koufax's catalog only consists of a few albums, Phish, which controlled my life for 18 months, has a massive catalog. This is all relatively obvious though, I think.
[2] Let's say it was something like Mineral or Cave In; those seem like appropriate bands for the time period.
[3] The clear consensus is that it was Michael Jordan's Bulls.
[4] The Arcade Fire comes to mind; they'd be pretentious enough to tell Spin Magazine that they are hands on in the recording process, and prefer analog because it has a warmer sound.
[5] See i.e., Beck – “Timebomb”, Mae – “The Afterglow”
[6] It should be noted that you will see a trend in discerning which Andrews-produced/mixed albums are successes and which are failures: the successes are generally good songs, and the failures are generally bad songs. Hopefully this is not a surprise, as good music tends to the backbone of a good recording.
[7] Coincidentally, Failure had given Albini the boot after being dissatisfied with the sonic results of their first album “Comfort”. This is something I never quite understood, because that album is very good, though different sounding. At the end of the day though, “Magnified” is better, so maybe Failure made the right move.
