HiRez Poll America - HOLIDAY [Blu-Ray Audio]

[SomethingAnything]

I included this as an extra when I bought the new Joni Mitchel boxset and it is my least known of the America albums (basically, I just know the singles). Each song is quite lovely, and I like the fact that I can go on to play this only now getting to know 75% of it. How great is Hollywood! And I agree with what others are saying about Tin Man. I thought my surround speakers had suddenly failed and were just giving a strange chiming sound (whereas I think this is the triangle!). The voice in What Does It Matter sounds a bit gimmicky and slightly sped up, but OK in a twee kind of way. And the navigation is definitely problematic. But this is a very short album (slightly over 33 mins) and best to simply put on and let play.
For me, this is an eight all up, and something I will return to and enjoy many times, especially when I'm after a little calm enjoyment from my speakers.

 

[mandrix]

Not their best album, to me. But worthy.

Short on lyrics but long on meaning, "Sandman" on the first album is one of my favorites...actually several on that album.
Shame there will be no Quadio release of "America".

 

[steelydave]

Such an interesting post. Thank you. (So much so, I was quite interested to see how you rated it, given your well-informed comments, and was surprised to see you elected not to.)

Thank you - I haven't voted yet because I like to 'live' with albums (or at least new versions of them) for a while before I render a verdict. Obviously you can't be totally objective when being subjective, but I feel like if you rate or judge an album quickly, a lot of that judgement is really the gulf between your expectations or hopes and the initial experience you had, like if you expected it to be great, and your initial listen wasn't good, the rating might be lower than if you expected it to be terrible. Or if you had expectations about elements of the mix being in specific speakers t in a surround mix and they aren't, then I think sometimes your rating can be lower than it would be otherwise simply because of the disappointment factor. I think with repeated listens you get a "truer" rating, one that's based more on 'do I like this?/Is it good?' instead of 'Does this live up to my expectations?'

With this one I spent quite a bit of time (more than I wanted to really) remastering it to suit my own sonic preferences and by the end of it I was kind of sick of it on account of repeated listens over a short period of time, so I put it away and haven't listened to it since before I made the post you quoted. It's certainly an 8 or above (especially after the extra work I put in, as I have a very high opinion of my own talents, haha) and honestly when I listen to the album I'm totally satisfied from beginning to end, so in one regard it's a 10. But I probably will only listen to this album a handful of times a year, where other true '10' albums that I love get considerably more rotation. And really, I think they could've been a touch more adventurous with the surround soundfield, but that's probably just a philisophical difference I have with the two guys who did the original mix.