Candy-O

It's been a long time in the making near enough 22 months since I ordered this cd when it's release was announced but on September 13th it finally comes out on gold mini lp style cd and 180 gram vinyl. I first remember buying this in 1979 being mightily impressed with the debut album released June 1978 and it's clutch of singles that charted well in the UK. The lead off single on this album was Let's Go a perky little 'new wave' number with It's all I Can Do being the second going from memory. I really like Mobile Fidelity, the Chicago based re-issue labels work which frequently sounds much better than the regular cd or lp issues and am really looking forward to hearing this remastered. In case any doesn't know the model in the body stocking is Candy Moore.The new issue to me has judged the sound of the percussion about right as one of the signature sounds of producer Roy Thomas Baker's work is the forward highly miked drum sound that is hard to pull off without sounding harsh .
The original cd a red coloured top one from the early 80's was generally a very pleasant sounding one easily one the best Cars cds of the time but suffered from quite a lot of hiss and also has a haze over the upper treble suggesting to me this was a few generations removed from the original master tape. In 1999 Joe Gaswirt remastered the first three albums using HDCD encoding in the United States and these were not made available in Europe.I like Joe's work a lot but while it's plain he had better tapes, his version of Candy-O sounds harsh with a funny splashiness effecting the percussion a lot so wasn't as enjoyable as it should of been even though the 'attack' was better.
I'd say this new version marries the better tapes and attack of the HDCD issue with the better rendering of the drums as well as that general listenable nature and certainly is the best cd version I've ever heard.
Strongly recommended.