Review
by Nicholas James |
 |
Now this is a truly spectacular release. You
will probably have already read my review of
the
original CD release
of this album, so you will already know that
I rank this as one of the best Bee Gees
albums of all time, and indeed one of the
top two or three experimental albums of all
time. Odessa is a sprawling masterpiece
where the Gibb brothers were at their most
creative and is surely one of the finest
recordings in the modern rock era.
The Deluxe Edition is well worth buying for
a number of reasons. Firstly, the album has
been digitally remastered and the songs are
presented here in a crisper, clearer format
than ever before. They all sound extremely
fresh, better indeed than many of the Bee
Gees albums of the 1990s. There is also a
separate disc with the original mono version
of the album, which has a slightly different
mix of some of the songs, with vocals often
louder in the mix.
But what really makes this release worth
buying for the real hardcore fans is the
third disc, which is separately packaged and
called Sketches from Odessa. This includes
demo versions of all but one of the tracks,
sometimes in more than one version, and two
previously unreleased tracks: Nobody's
Someone and Pity.
The album comes in a felt sleeve, harking
back to the original vinyl edition, and
features a fold-out poster of the Bee Gees
and a booklet with background information on
each track.
This is what might be described as an 'event
album'. It allows the listener to completely
immerse him or herself in possibly the most
ambitious project of the Bee Gees career to
date.
Why Buy Odessa?
This sprawling masterpiece now has digitally
remastered sound, unreleased recordings and
demos. An essential album. |
