Crash! Boom! Bang! 30th Anniversary Edition

I think we were spoiled by the Look Sharp! and Joyride 30th anniverysary editions. That doesn’t sound like a very positive start for the review of the Crash! Boom! Bang! 30th anniversary edition release, but only because those earlier releases set a high bar.

It may sound harsh, but those two releases lavished upon us quite comprehensive booklets, a multitude of demos and alternate versions, and exquisite packaging. The Look Sharp! digital release even kept being fleshed out substantially after its initial release.

This isn’t a review of those releases, however, so let’s jump in.

The good

As a package for the general public, it’s fantastic.

The LP, first CD and digital media (supposedly¹) contain all tracks recorded for the album. Yay! The second CD with demos is also very nicely fleshed out.

For the most part, the design also adheres a lot closer to the original release compared to the earlier 30th anniversary editions where fonts and photos didn’t always match the original releases. I was not that impressed by the red background on the CD’s back cover when I saw photos online, but it looks much better in real life.

Quality-wise, these are also very nice. I may be wrong, but it looks like the (cover) artwork was (re)created from scratch (like Joyride 30) instead of scanning the old material (like Look Sharp! 30) – for the CD at least.

The bad

As a package for the more hardcore fans, this is a bit lacklustre. It reminds me a bit of The Rox Box in that it seems very expansive on the surface, but really only includes minimal new material. I know, we’re very hard to please.

Speaking of the track list, the mix of “Crazy About You” is the one from the You Don’t Understand Me single and not the original mix for this album as released on the Salvation single. A small oversight, for sure, but avoidable.

There’s also a few issues with the demos where details are incomplete or inconsistent. The “Crazy About You” demo is listed as 18 June on the digital release only and 20 June on the CD. It’s 20 June everywhere else up to now, so is this a typo or is 18 June actually the correct date? (I’m having visions of the various recording dates for the “I’m Sorry” demo. Urgh.) “Sleeping in My Car” has no date listed except 1993, but we know Per wrote it in the evening after the record execs said they “didn’t hear a single” on 9 December 1993 and it was recorded the next day. 10 December. Just add it. The same thing goes for “Almost Unreal” listing only February 1993 when we know Per is meticulous about documenting stuff. I mean, you’ve seen the images of his original lyrics and the demo tapes covered in dates.

You may have noticed that I said the “second CD” is nicely fleshed out, but whereas CDs have a physical limit on how much you can cram in there, digital media doesn’t suffer from the same limitation. So, why stick with the same track list for the digital/streaming release when there are so many more demos which could have been added? Can we be hopeful that we’ll have a repeat of Look Sharp! 30 where the digital release was expanded again and again until it contained everything Per could find. I mean, we know there’s some additional tracks – “Pocketful of Rain” was in the Bag of Trix and other demos are in The Per Gessle Archives.

Let’s not forget the “Fireworks” remix which is also M.I.A. For a track which was originally going to be the album’s title, it’s not had an easy time.

And then, of course, we get to the quotes about “She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” from the Don’t Bore Us – Get to the Chorus! liner notes. Marie said: “This was actually written a couple of years back and recorded for the Crash!-album, but that version sounded really tired.” Per added: “A new version was recorded…”, referring to the version on Don’t Bore Us – Get to the Chorus!. This doesn’t sound like only “a demo was recorded for the Crash!-album” to me, so why not include it?^1:1

I did say we were spoiled by the earlier 30th anniversary releases, and I’m willing to overlook a lot of things but the one thing I would have LOVED to have seen included would have been a similar agenda to the one that was included in the Joyride booklet that showed an almost day-by-day overview of the recordings and other important events in 1990.

The cover artwork for the LP shows signs of haloing around the lettering, and the colour doesn’t match the artwork from the CD (much too dark), so this seems to be a scan. Not a terrible scan, but noticeable nonetheless.

The ugly

While the general design felt a lot more like the original release, my complaint here is why they didn’t just add drop shadows to the coloured texts to match the original and not mar the photographs with odd color overlays and effects. I know that from Charm School onwards the Roxette albums’ designs became a lot more organic and handmade and that was part of their design, but that isn’t true for these older releases. Why mess with something that worked?

Which brings me to the digital release’s artwork. Eek. When scaled down on your mobile phone or in the sidebar of your music player it looks great. When you look at it zoomed to 100% is when the flaws show. This is quite clearly a scan that wasn’t properly descreened. Since the (scanned) artwork for the LP is much better and the artwork is basically pristine for the CD release, why would you not use one of those instead as a starting point?

I realise there’s a lot of nit-picking and the bad and the ugly are way longer than the good, but in all I’m actually very happy that we got this. I would always love more material and for things to be more correct, whether factually or design-wise, but this plugs at least a few more holes of demos we hadn’t heard before. There’s even a tiny bit more information on the recordings in 1993. And we can always create playlists for ourselves which contain every (correct) track. A nice addition to the collection, to be sure.