It’s been a very long time since I listened to Marshall Crenshaw’s Miracle of Science from the 90s, but it recently got released on vinyl for the first time, so I picked it up. Back in the day, the CD was up for a packaging Grammy Award, as it was one of the first discs to have etching on it, which in turn was used very cleverly. Musically, it’s a stellar album too, though the new vinyl version kinda messes with a good thing, severely reordering the songs and doing something truly bizarre—it features an entire song in reverse, and then plays it forward. Tomfoolery like that is fine on CD because you can press the skip button but that’s irritating on record. All that said, even that can’t ruin the fact that this is a great collection of songs! “What Do You Dream Off” is a straight-up toe-tapper to kick things off, followed by a guitar solo barnburner, “Who Stole That Train,” for a solid one-two punch. There’s the haunting “Laughter” with its descending harmonies, “Starless Summer Sky” which was a “lost” forgotten song of his he found in a pile of demo tapes from the glory days of his debut album, and plenty more good stuff. Even throwaways like “There And Back Again” have wonderful lyrics that bring a writerly eye to the proceedings. Even with that stupid reverse song, it’s still a stupendous album.
