Grave Mistake Records recently reissued Big Eyes‘ demo 7-inch from 2010 as part of a co-release with Evil Weevil, who originally put it out. When Alex at Grave Mistake told me that it’d been recut and repressed at a different plant, I figured this was a good time to sit down and compare the two releases.
Demo 2010 (as I suppose the record is now known) has new art, new labels, and it’s also cut at 45 versus 33. Everything’s different, at least in terms of the physical appearance, but how does it sound? I’m one of those people who’s not going to buy a record I already own just because it’s got a new cover.
Is it really worth getting a copy of this repress if you own the original? I’d say yes. “I’d Prefer to Be Alone” is far cleaner — the guitars come through far better, and aren’t overwhelmed by the bass as they were on the original. “Since You Left” is less a fuzzbucket bunch of instrumentation. On the original recording, it’s just a wash of noise that it’s only the occasional guitar lick cutting through to remind you there are seperate instruments, whereas on the repress, the various components are individually distinct, without losing that dirty aura of the garage.
Seriously, you’ll hear the opening to “You Ain’t the Only One,” and the guitar tone will knock you on your ass. It’s astonishingly vibrant, compared to the muddiness of the Evil Weevil press. This is a garage pop record now, as opposed to a poppy garage record. If you slept on getting the original press — or, really, even if you didn’t — you need this repress.
You can grab in the Grave Mistake webstore.
