Springsteen's "Magic" on vinyl, opinions?


After hearing Bruce's new one, Magic, I'm in the camp of listeners who thinks this is a great return to classic form. But the compressed, squashed production is awful! I can't imagine what Brendan O'Brien was thinking when he mixed this sonic sludge. Is the vinyl any better sounding than the cd version?
photon46
There's another post here that confirms Brendan O'Brien ruined an otherwise fine album with poor production and mixing. The consensus is he mixed the album to be played through iPod earphones. Vinyl isn't much of an improvement: Garbage in, garbage out.
I am actually glad to have confirmation from you guys that this CD is poorly recorded. Magic, the song is not bad, but the rest of it is pretty poor. I thought I had some bad tubes in my amp/preamp until I played Wilco's "Sky blue sky" to confirm it wasn't the tubes. Maybe they were going for a grunge sound, but it didn't work, vocals are really bad! Don't know how Bruce allowed this?
I own both. The cd id horrible, I threw it away. Haven'y gotten to the vinyl yet, sorry to hear its not much of an improvement.
I am a huge Springsteen fan, but for the life of me can't understand why his records sound so terrible. He obviously has money for production and control over his music at this point in his career. I have purchased a couple of his "newer" LP's and don't listen to them because the sound is so bad.

OTOH, it's funny how Nebraska is so enjoyable for me to listen to..... I love old country blues music too, and it has that kind of spooky Robert Johnson in a hotel room/field rocording thing going..... A "low-fi" before low-fi was cool vibe if you will.

CHris