Stellar power pop album, mediocre re-mastering

The Heats may be the best power pop band that most power pop fans have never heard. They peaked between the 1970s wave of AM radio pop and its 1980s underground echo, playing Seattle clubs and gaining regional college radio attention. Their lone LP, 1980’s Have an Idea, was produced by Heart’s Howard Leese and released on their managers’ Albatross label to local fanfare but no national attention. It sold 15,000 copies and failed to garner the band a major label deal. The thirteen original songs, including a remake of the catchy single “I Don’t Like Your Face,” are filled with the influences of the Beatles, Big Star, Tom Petty, and Dwight Twilley, and the singing of guitarists Steve Pearson and Don Short borrows some fine harmonies from the Everly Brothers.

This Japanese reissue of the original album was produced from sources that are inferior to the original vinyl pressing (and thus to the original master tapes). The high end is missing, shaving off the keening edges of the voices, guitars, drums, and cymbals, and sounding as if this was played through a radio. Much of this material was reissued in better fidelity on 1998’s Smoke, but this is the first CD to include the original album track “Questions Questions” and the correct album takes/edits of “Ordinary Girls,” “I Don’t Like Your Face” and “She Don’t Mind.” The four bonus songs, “Let’s All Smoke,” “Rivals,” “Count on Me,” and “In Your Town,” are great additions to the original album tracks.

Hats off to Air Mail for having the taste to reissue this album, for digging up superb bonus material (particularly the Flamin’ Groovies’-styled “Count on Me”), and for including the original front and back covers; it’s a shame they couldn’t come up with a better audio source. That said, it’s a mark of just how good this album is that even in lesser fidelity, the music’s chiming charms still shine. At import prices, most listeners will be better off with the near-complete Smoke, but fans will either need to track down an original vinyl copy, or make do with the listenable-but-less-than-ideal sound offered here. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]