![]() ![]() A new mix by the album’s engineer Ed Stasium gives the record a heavier bottom end and trims some of its trippy phasing. The great majority of the unreleased cuts on this three-disc set are devoted to slight variations on the original trackings. To that end, it makes sense that the 40th Anniversary Deluxe edition of Leave Home is littered with alternate mixes, all attempting to achieve a precise balance of muscle and effervescence. They churn out bubblegum garage and ragged love songs, camouflaging their fizziness with brawn. ![]() Sure, the record sounds beefier than what came before, but the group didn’t write straight rock songs for Leave Home because they were besotted with pop. They’d throw away their most immediate melody on “Carbona Not Glue,” a song that couldn’t make it on the album due to legal reasons, and they’d play their sweetest harmonies with the intensity of a buzzsaw. Never mind that the Ramones’ version of a hit was decidedly low-rent-all the group wanted was to play the catchy parts as loudly and quickly as possible-because the Ramones could never differentiate between what would appeal to a larger audience and what was best left unsaid. Like before, the hooks are extrapolated from singles that cluttered the AM airwaves in the ’60s and early 1970s, and if the trash aesthetic doesn’t seem as artful here as it does on Ramones, blame it on the decision to try for a hit. Instead, the band sell their rebellious stance with a smile, turning a freak show taunt into the rallying cry of “Gabba gabba, we accept you/We accept you, one of us.” Elsewhere, the band shows hints of heart-they’re advocating for the woman subject of “You’re Gonna Kill That Girl,” and their griping about Sire on “Swallow My Pride” reveals some of Joey’s soul-but those moments are overshadowed by hooks so oversized they seem cartoonish. Some of that derives from the album’s comparative thematic lightness: The group may still be huffing fumes, but they’re not selling their bodies on a street corner the inherent scuzz and sleaze no longer feels quite so dangerous. On the debut, all this filth still seemed nasty, but there is a slight shift in tone on Leave Home that pushes the band toward caricature. Part of the Ramones’ charm is how they seemed like renegades from an underground comic book-a degenerate answer to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, celebrating all the glories that slithered out of the sewer. But viewing Leave Home through that prism undersells how the record sounds and feels very different from its predecessor. They even cherry-picked another old frat-rock hit (1960’s “California Sun”) to reiterate that their heart lied in the music made before the Beatles. To an extent, that’s true: often, it seems like the Ramones are determined to deliver an answer to their debut, writing responses to their glue-sniffing escapades, Nazi flirtations, and horror film infatuations. Maybe this consistency is part of the reason why Leave Home often gets dismissed with the praise that it merely offers more of the same. ![]() But by falling short of the group’s grand ambitions, the album crystallized the conundrum at the heart of the Ramones: no matter how badly they yearned for hits, they couldn’t help but sound like variations of their basic selves. If anything, Leave Home marked a step backward in that regard, peaking at 148 where Ramones went to 111. Stardom eventually would happen for the Ramones, but the hits they craved never materialized. ![]()
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