I did not mean to suggest the discrepancy was down to age. There are vast swathes of recorded music that I love listening to that were recorded in the 60s, 70s...even the 1980s! Productions that sound far warmer and more 'real' and alive than most material I hear in these dull digital days. And I just wonder why The Smiths never sounded as good as that music. I think finance was probably a bigger factor than we'd like to think, but I do believe that it was at least in part an artistic and aesthetic decision. Them were rotten days in the 80s. It was a binary age. You had to take a stand on one side or the other, on everything, from Free Market Capitalism to Fairlight synthesizers. And part of The Smiths kitchen sink, anti-glamour aesthetic was their cheap as chips, MW radio sound. In opposition to yer Bob Clearmountain/Mutt Lange/Trevor Horn type sounds. As was the way with The Smiths this ended up actually becoming glamourous! But one quarter century on, it doesn't work.
Yes it does. I think it sounds great - more so, in fact, now than I thought then.
In general, that is, because there is hardly such a thing as a single Smiths sound. Actually, I doubt you could find any band with such diverse production over such a brief period.
You have the debut album, with its distinctive (and in my opinion not very successful) production - heavy, compact, caged-in.
Then you have Hatful of Hollow and the Peel sessions - raw and naked, with a lot of room given to the guitar.
Then there's Meat is Murder (at least a part of the way) and TQID and TWWL, who I think have really nice, balanced production that sounds more accomplished but retains the drive and freshness of the previous recordings.
Finally, there is the abomination known as Strangeways Here We Come, which has a complex, luscious and attractive sound. Unfortunately the woolly layers of spaced-out sound also completely kills the drive and dynamism that was such a key part of the earlier recordings, which is the main reason why I have found it such a perennial disappointment since I first heard it.
The problems I have with these are the same ones I had at the time. I wish they'd have let Troy Tate produce the first album, he was truly on to the right thing judging from the Tate Sessions - above all, centering the sound around Marr's guitar melody, as heard f.e. on Pretty Girls Make Graves. The later records sound great to me, still (although Strangeways still sounds good in a way that undermines the music). After 25 years, I love the sound of Hatful better than ever - the stripped-down rawness just suits the music so marvellously.