Re Imaginos
by Albert Bouchard

From spigelwii 07/02/2024 18:02 | #304147

Anyone who knows me as a BOC fan knows that I'm not a big Imaginos fan. A lot of that has to do with the production of the record, being that it's all blown-out late 80's production and very much a product of its shitty-sounding time. The songs themselves are pretty good, though, so the knowledge that the band's (brilliant) original drummer, Al Bouchard, was rearranging and rerecording all of the songs as part of the ReImaginos project was enough to get me salivating.

What we got, and what I'm reviewing almost four years after my first listen, is an overcorrection in the opposite direction. The reimagined versions of the songs I liked on the original release don't rock AT ALL, Albert's vocals sound *exhausted*, and the guitar work is nowhere near up to the quality of the "guitar orchestra" that BOC employed on the original release. On the other hand, there are a handful of incredibly weak tracks on the original release. Many of those actually got interesting readings here (looking primarily at Del Rio Song in this case), and there are a couple of other tracks not part of the original project that actually play out as the best songs on this release.

So, like the original release, ReImaginos is...a mixed bag. Who knows? Maybe in 2052 there will be an entrepreneuring hardcore BOC fan who fancies giving the Imaginos project a DEFINITIVE reading.