July 3, 2014
The Best Reissues of 2014
Rolling Stone has picked both Bob Mould’s Workbook 25 and Hank Williams The Garden Spot Programs, 1950 as part of The Best Reissues of 2014.
Read the entire list here, or skip to the two we’re most excited about below!
Bob Mould, Workbook 25
This 25th-anniversary reissue of the 1989 solo debut from Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould features an accelerated and raging live rendering of the album that adds a few Hüsker classics—acoustic and disarmingly tender.
Hank Williams, The Garden Spot Programs, 1950
The way Hank Williams digs his wail into the word “care,” causing it to dip precipitously, well, that’s enough right there to justify this reissue of collected 1950 radio transcriptions, a.k.a., sponsored, taped “live” performance sent to radio stations. Not as essential as 2012’s The Lost Concerts Limited Collector’s Edition, these recordings still help to sketch a more palpable depiction of “The Ol’ Lovesick Drifting Cowboy himself” (as the announcer puts it here). Soberly full-voiced and steadily nuanced as he runs through alternate versions of “Lovesick Blues,” Williams coaxes you over to his mournfully steely worldview on “Mind Your Own Business” and “Wedding Bells Will Never Ring for Me” like a savvy pro. The pedal steel sparkles warmly, the fiddle sprints, the frontman hawks the product (“You can find this one on wax, if you care to”) and there’s a near three-minute ad for the sponsor a Waxahatchie, Texas mail-order plant nursery. You can practically smell the hydrangeas and heartache.
