Last Friday was the release date of the CD that I never expected to see, but I should know better than to underestimate the powers of Rubellan Remasters. They are the plucky reissue label [run by one person – Scott Davies] that often seems like a manifestation of my brain gone rogue and given to grandiose realizations of my wildest fantasies of deluxe CD remasters. Sure, sure. Of late they are diving into the LP reissue trend [with a colorful line in Ultravox, Visage, and Oingo Boingo LPs], but this is a full-fledged CD and we wasted little time in ordering our personal copy!

I have written at length about the fulsome merits of “Sleep It Off,” the second, and sadly final Cristina album at length. If I didn’t have limited time and a number of targets to hit today, I would be capable of extolling its astonishing virtues even further, but suffice to say that this was the CD that can correct the numerous issues with the single, earlier CD mastering of this amazing piece of work. Which we’ll next see.

Cristina: Sleep It Off – US – CD [2023]

1. Don’t Mutilate My Mink 3:12
2. Ticket To The Tropics 4:20
3. She Can’t Say That Anymore 3:05
4. Quicksand Lovers 3:16
5. Rage & Fascination 4:31
6. Ballad Of Immoral Earnings 4:17
7. What’s A Girl To Do 3:31
8. The Lie Of Love 4:31
9. Blue Money 4:12
10. He Dines Out On Death 2:34
11. Things Fall Apart 4:29
12. Disco Clone (7″ Mix) 4:12

Meanwhile, a look at the rear cover was even more dramatic with the original song order as shown above in tracks 1-10 a welcome return from the radical re-think of the 2004 CD as shown below.

1. What’s A Girl To Do
2. Ticket To The Tropics
3. The Lie Of Love
4. Quicksand Lovers
5. Rage & Fascination
6. Ballad Of Immortal Earnings
7. She Can’t Say That Anymore
8. Blue Money
9. Don’t Mutilate My Mink
10. He Dines Out On Death
11. Smile
12. Deb Behind Bars
13. Things Fall Apart
14. When U Were Mine
15. Deb Behind Bars [Alternate Version]
16. You Rented A Space

The biggest difference on this new issue was down to something that I mentioned the last paragraph. This 2023 CD from Rubellan Remasters was actually mastered from a master tape! Sadly, the earlier masterings of “Sleep If Off” were taken from vinyl, and even worse, these recordings were further brickwalled to make them an exceptionally harsh listen. As the following wave images of the same song from each disc [the iconic “What’s A Girl To Do”] will duly reveal.

2004 MASTERING

2023 MASTERING

Listening to the differences between the editions was dramatic! Being taken from an LP, the 2004 edition featured excessive harsh sibilance on Cristina’s vocals as well as the mushy sounding cymbals and hi-hats. Details in the vibraphones and other percussive filigree were sadly lacking. And Scott Davies had admitted that he sought to tame the traditional [and anomalous] brittle high end footprint of “She Can’t Say That Any More” with a more balanced EQ curve. So for the first time ever, this song feels integrated with the surrounding album.

Having this CD fulfills a long-standing wish of mine to have something better than the 2004 disc. I was almost to the point of mastering my own copy from vinyl before I saw the happy news that it would be a Rubellan “passion project” and the label’s first CD release in six months. Anyone reading this far really needs to order this before it’s all gone. There will be probably a single pressing of it and when it’s sold out, that ship will have sailed. The early ZE CD editions have been OOP for ages and priced accordingly in the aftermarket. This CD is currently plentiful and priced to move at $15.99. Moreover, it actually gives these stellar songs and performances the staging that they so richly deserve. Act accordingly!

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CRISTINA’S WORLD

It was some time shortly following Cristina’s tragic death in the early days of the pandemic when I received an amazing email from Ian Birch; a name I knew from the days of Melody Maker and Smash Hits magazine. Mr. Birch revealed that he was writing and ,editing a book about Cristina and would I like to contribute a brief essay? Astonished that I was being invited to this project, I absolutely replied in the affirmative and sent off a brief and concise paragraph detailing what her art had meant to me. Hard to believe on all counts, if you’re familiar with not only the millions of words here at PPM but also my decidedly modest stature in the blogosphere [is that still a word?].

From the summer of 2020 through the next two years I would get an occasional missive from Mr. Birch on the project, updating me on its status as it hummed along. It was two years later when I was informed that the book was going to press and would be done soon. I asked him what the street date was so that I could time a review of it here on PPM and I received the bombshell that although it was being designed and published by ZE Books, there was no commercial release of the 400 page tome. The book had been privately commissioned for Cristina’s friends and family by her partner, Stephen Graham. Since I had been a contributor, I would also be getting a copy. Oh my.

Since I was absolutely the target audience for this book, I was especially grateful that I would be able to read a copy! How I wanted to find out all I could about the recording of her two, very different albums, with the strongest emphasis on the still-astonishing “Sleep It Off.” I also had an intense curiosity about what she had done during the many years when she was effectively retired from writing and recording music. I had heard tantalizing mentions of critical writing for the Village Voice and other publications, but I had seen nothing concrete over the years.

Fortunately, the estate of Cristina have not kept the amazing contents of the book a public secret, and to that end, they have built a website that contains all of the content for anyone to read and view. While there’s nothing quite like a mind-bogglingly thorough coffee table book on the life and art of a singer like Cristina, the website does have one over on the book by way of the songs and videos embedded within it for viewing and listening. I’d hate to be reading this book without having all of the relevant music [or videos] at arm’s reach.

The book and site were chock-full of candid recollections by family, partners, friends, and peers that detailed the full breadth of her life and times. From her childhood through her tempering in the artistic cauldrons of Harvard, London, and Paris. The full story was here with her unexpected transformation from a student of English History and Literature, to a theater critic, and ultimately a mononymous recording artist.

I’d read the occasional web article or interview about her flagging health [autoimmune issues and possibly more] that ultimately made her an early target for the Covid-19 virus along the way, but her post-ZE Records life was duly recounted intricate detail as she became a mother and then single. She ultimately re-connected near the end of her life with Stephen Graham; an early flame who she didn’t quite synch with in her youth, but who was the right man many years on. Most tantalizing were the lyrics for songs that were never recorded or possibly even completed with a score to record. There were at least two albums worth of material she had written in her notebooks [the source of many scanned images in her own hand here] that exist now to taunt her fans with their vibrancy.

Furthermore, a wealth of her published writings post-1984 were included here as well; making “Cristina” an well-wounded portrait of an artist with an enviable ability to write songs [as well as art and literary criticism] that were singular in their cold-eyed precision in hitting their targets full on. Making this book an enticing glimpse of not only the woman behind such observations, but also carrying the artistic seeds of songs which never managed to germinate in the years past her active recording career.

Fortunately for anyone reading this, the full content of the book is online now, with each chapter available as an excerpted web page with a PDF download of the full text. Click the homepage image below to read the new Cristina website that goes far beyond the handfuls of interviews that have popped up on the web in the last 20 years. This is what we’ve all been waiting for.

CLICK IMAGE BELOW TO READ THE BOOK ON THE CRISTINA WEBSITE

Join us tomorrow for a look at another book that ZE Books is publishing that we can all order and read.

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