Condition: Brand New Ships from: Melbourne

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• Landmark Debut Established Punk and Glam Foundations: New York Dolls Explodes with Raucous, Swaggering Rock n Roll, Includes Personality Crisis and Trash

  Hear the 1973 Record Rolling Stone Named the 301st Greatest Album of All Time in Audiophile Sound for the First Time: Mobile Fidelitys 180g 45RPM 2LP Set Reveals Brilliance of Todd Rundgrens Production

  The extroverted blend of attitude, energy, and ostentatiousness that spills from the New York Dolls self-titled debut can be seen in full view on the album cover. Depicting the quintet in its hallmark flash-and-trash apparel and in drag appearance, the 1973 album scared away a considerable amount of potential listeners while capturing the attention of a sizable audience that recognized the band for what it was: zeitgeist pioneers who helped develop the punk and glam rock movements.

  Named by Rolling Stone the 301st Greatest Album of All Time and by Mojo the 49th greatest album of all time, New York Dolls receives long-overdue audiophile treatment on Mobile Fidelitys numbered-edition 180g 45RPM 2LP set. Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, this collectible version marks the first time the groups career-making statement is available to be experienced in audiophile quality.

  Far from harboring the crude elements that became associated with the punk scene, New York Dolls benefits from keen production overseen by none other than Todd Rundgren. Though more accustomed to working far higher-caliber musicians, Rundgren taken by the New York Dolls charisma and cool, if not their instrumental approach fully understood the ensembles aesthetic. He captured what went down at New York Citys Record Plant with an astute blend of live-on-the-floor feel, raw authenticity, and professional acumen.

  On Mobile Fidelitys definitive-sounding reissue, you can hear those facets as well as key details, dynamics, and textures with previously unimaginable insight. Rundgren preserved generous degrees of grit, grime, and grease while bestowing the raucous music with elevated levels of separation, solidity, and impact every landmark recording deserves. His vision extends to introducing choice accents barroom piano notes, Moog synthesizer passages, Buddy Bowsers honking saxophones that add to the songs appeal without interfering with the primary architecture.

  Afforded extra groove space on this pressing, the tenor, presentation, and attack of both vocalist David Johansen and now-iconic guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain come across with stunning vibrancy and vitality. The New York Dolls often seem headed off the rails and into the red, but somehow, the strut, swagger, and sloppiness and the associated sleaze and scruff, scrape and snarl, frenzy and feverishness those characteristics entail remain together as a whole that shakes its collective fist at the frustrations, isolation, disarray, and disillusionment of youth chaos and urban decay.

  Kicking off its debut with Personality Crisis, cited by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the band makes obvious its grasp of alienation, deviance, displacement, and suburban disaffection as well as its capacity to play hanging-by-a-thread boogie, noisy rock n roll, and Brill Building-inspired pop. The lipstick-kissed New York Dolls possesses traits many of its harsher predecessors would overlook: joyfulness and melody, topped with a knack for knowing how and where to take a song inside of three-and-a-half minutes.

  Dive and dash with the belligerent Looking for a Kiss; stomp your feet and clap your hands to the big choruses of Jet Boy; surrender to the demands and provocations of the coded Vietnamese Baby; decide whether Bad Girl yearns to explode or implode. Its one of several tunes here that allude to the world coming to end. Of course, that doesnt mean there isnt time for a fling before everything burns. Theres no place I gotta go, yowls Johansen. And he means it.

  Adorned with tonal crunch, glitter, and gristle, New York Dolls takes pride in its brashness and brattiness. The rambunctious effort, which earned the band the distinction of being voted both Best New Group of the Year and Worst New Group of the Year in the pages of Creem, displays knowing reverence for the blues without calling attention to the style. The folk-laden Lonely Planet Boy is nothing if not a collision of heart-on-the-sleeve emotions and the desire in the face of challenges to maintain a tough-skinned exterior. An interpretation of Bo Diddleys Pills, complete with shivering harmonica and clattering rhythms, announces theres no cure for what infects this band. Its that contagious. And how.

  His deliveries gushing with campy fun, playful irreverence, and sheer decadence, Johansen doubles as the equivalent of an open fire hydrant that spouts at will. Hes at once tender and vicious, serious and tongue-in-cheek. On arguably his finest hour on the album, Johansens phrasing, passion, and lyrical ambiguity alone turn Trash into an insistent glam-rock gem whose echoing harmonies and girl-group references stamp it a pop classic.

  Too much, too soon? Only for those averse to some of the finest rock n roll ever put on tape.

  1/4 / 15 IPS Dolby A analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe

  Review

  AllMusic rating: AllMusic users: (1,440 votes) Read the AllMusic.com review

• Artist: New York Dolls Label: Mercury, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Format: LP Units: 2 Country: US Genre: Pop & Rock

• A1 Personality Crisis
  A2 Looking For A Kiss
  A3 Vietnamese Baby
  B1 Lonely Planet Boy
  B2 Frankenstein (Orig.)
  C1 Trash
  C2 Bad Girl
  C3 Subway Train
  D1 Pills
  D2 Private World
  D3 Jet Boy