Brad Barrish

I found out about this unreleased Steve Albini version of Cheap Trick’s In Color from a Threads post and have had it on repeat ever since. Anyone who knows anything about Albini knows he was a massive fan of Cheap Trick. The short story is the band apparently thought the original mix of In Color was a little too polished so they ended up re-recording the album with Albini over the course of a few days. He discussed this in his Tape Op interview in 2012.

A fairly big project for them was rerecording the entire In Color album. At the time, that struck me as a mistake; like a capitulation of “we did our best stuff a long time ago.” It seemed like a mistake, up until they started working on it. Then it seemed like the best idea ever. It was so invigorating and it was so much fun. It was so satisfying to hear them blowing those songs out full- bore.

So far they haven’t released it. I think it was more about them exorcising their demons about that record. I think they felt for years like they’d been carrying that record around and that record didn’t represent them. They just wanted a shot to do it their way. And, once they did, I think it soothed their ennui. I don’t think they feel the need to exploit that; it’s just something they wanted to do.

He also discusses it in a Stereogum interview from 2024.

Now, I’ve never confirmed any of this with the band, but my intuition based on what was going on around the band at the time was that they were in the middle of extricating themselves from a managerial relationship and also from a record label relationship. And that album, the In Color album, had most of their hit titles on it. And so by remaking that album, they created a version of it that they owned entirely and that then they could use, they could license and keep all the money from. And that was a tactic that was later used by Taylor Swift and other people. They were pretty early and pretty on the ball doing that.

That seemed like such a crazy idea. And it almost seemed like a kind of a tacit admission that their later material wasn’t as good. I thought it was a bad idea, and I said, so. Then from the minute they started, I just could not have enjoyed myself more sitting there listening to it, and I’m so glad they did it. If you’ve ever seen them play live, that’s what they sound like. They’re an energetic hard rock band, and their studio record version didn’t, didn’t really bring that across that much.

Wow! I really hope the band officially releases this at some point.