Good point.
This review makes no reference to the surround mix.
The Giles Martin reference is apt, as you're "damned if you do, damned if you don't" in these situations.
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Thus, formulating a 21st-century remix of an album as singular, cherished and influential as “Big Pink” would be a daunting chore for any production hand. The job fell to Clearmountain, who has served the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams and Hall & Oates, among others, as a mixing engineer.
Clearmountain, who has always been most comfortable in a hard rock or pop context, was destined to be challenged by the distinctive aesthetic of the album’s original producer John Simon, who also helmed The Band’s sophomore album and served as a sort of sixth member of the group.
Simon envisioned “Music From Big Pink” as an ensemble work. In his 2016 memoir “Testimony,” Robbie Robertson offers a detailed account of the album recording sessions at New York’s A&R Studio and Hollywood’s Capitol Tower, during which the standard studio baffles were removed so the musicians could see and interact with one another face-to-face, and the songs were mainly recorded live to three tracks, with a fourth track left for horns. No one singer took the lead — Manuel, Danko, Helm and even the usually vocally reticent Robertson were all featured up front — and the stacked harmonies and call-and-response vocals were a distinctive feature of the album.
In 1968 the members of the Band sounded as if they were nestled comfortably against one another; in the 2018 rendering — most especially in the noisy, infernally busy mix of Dylan and Danko’s “This Wheel’s On Fire” — they sound as if they’re warring for attention. Helm’s drums and Robertson’s guitar fills have been juiced (while, strangely, Danko’s formidable, funky bass is usually played down). Even the sparse, doomy “The Weight” and the spare, aching album-closer “I Shall Be Released” sound newly cluttered. (And speaking of clutter, the studio slates added to a couple of tracks are a pointless nuisance.)
