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Out of curiosity, I recently picked up a few Todd Rundgren efforts from the library: Something/Anything? (have it on LP, but never listen to it), the Anthology, and Wizard/True Star.

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Is it just me, or does everything the man touches sound like a lo-fi demo pulled from a beat-up LP? I finally understand my semi-aversion to the sound on "Skylarking," the sort of squishy, super-compressed sheen. Heck, what IS it? What *is* he doing to make his records sound so odd?

Lots of EQ, I'm told.

I love the album for what it is, but I'd sure love to hear a remix of Straight Up.

Let us remember, that in his day he was considered quite the boy wonder as a producer/recordist (as well as musician/composer). The cool music press kind of lost interest in him when he went prog with Utopia.

I agree with the boy wonder label...his one-man-band efforts are more impressive in a cohesive sense than McCartney's, and while I'm not personally enamored of his compositional style it's quite obvious that he's exceptionally talented. I just don't know why everything from those two albums sounds like a particularly poorly-recorded demo.

Overly processed records for the most part. When XTC dumped him for the next album, the murky sound went with him. He really screwed up Skylarking imho.

There are moments on many of his records when he does not go over board with the compression and overdubing. Just moments.