Talking Heads

At last, they've finally remastered the Talking Heads catalog, one side of each disc in stereo with bonus tracks, and the other in 5.1 surround sound. This needed to happen, too, since the albums as available were muffled and muddy. The two downsides, however, are not insignificant. One, for some reason I couldn't copy these into iTunes and then to my iPod. Instead, I had to (illegally) download the entire set, which I of course already owned, just to get usable MP3 copies for the iPod.

Second, the packaging is dumb. None of the individual CDs feature tracklistings or the album's title on its spine, making them frustrating to store or casually peruse, considering they're housed in a big, white plastic brick. Sure, it's better than the previous Talking Heads boxed set Rhino came up with, which doesn't even fit on a shelf and proved a woefully inadequate tease. But better means very little when they still make the damn albums so hard to listen to.