Sound City: Reel to Reel

Recorded on the legendary Neve 8028 analog mixing console installed in Dave Grohl’s studio, Sound City: Reel To Reel encapsulates without an expiration date—maybe a little to hastily—four decades of sound from a wonderful yet shitty recording studio.

The perfect number of artists participating in a collaboration usually brings out the best in musicians, even in the mediocre. Too many and it sounds too generic. Too few and it sounds like one person’s creative control influences the sound too much. Most of this album found the right number.

It only takes five songs to make this soundtrack taste like a box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans from Harry Potter. The first two tracks, “Heaven And All” and “Time Slowing Down”—featuring the bassist and drummer from Rage Against The Machine—open up the album properly with a rock heavy sound that doesn’t care if it gets played on the radio.

Fitting in Stevie Nicks and Rick Springfield has this locomotive tone derail out the window with an introspective ballad and then an 80s artificially flavored power pop. Track five, “Your Wife Is Calling,” rips that popsicle out of the listener’s hand and pisses on it with old school rusty punk by Lee Ving.

This soundtrack crescendos with “Cut Me Some Slack,” showcasing a gritty sludge rock with bouts of soulful and youthful Paul McCartney at his best—collaborating with great musicians. This should push McCartney to abandon his solo efforts.

Sound City: Reel To Reel is a box of every-flavor beans, and one can’t help but stuff all of them in the mouth at once when one should savor most flavors individually. There are some earwax flavored beans, but the other flavorful nuggets should overpower the inedible.