I think the confusion stems from the existence of “4-Track Demos”, but in practice Albini really liked the original demos and encouraged Harvey to turn them into an album.

My only real complaint about the production on “Rid of Me” is the obnoxious volume shifts on the title track and “Highway 61 Revisited” which seem to neither reflect what the live performances sounded like nor accommodate home listening.

Oh man, I just find the title track absolutely thrilling, my whole body is tense building up to the chorus, partly because it's so extreme. And it doesn't seem unrepresentative of what she was _trying_ to achieve - I don't know many other performers who use breaths and whispers as artfully as she does. I think it's just hard to achieve such extremes as part of a wider live set.

Yeah, on stage you're fighting with adrenaline, shitty monitoring, screaming audiences and it's usually a pale imitation of what happens during jamming/rehearsing where you actually develop the songs.

I think that's subjective. It probably doesn't sound like a live performance would, but it does probably reflect fairly well what you'd hear if you were in the room with them rehearsing.

Listening to the album again now it's such a relief to hear a recording with such dynamic range, not the appallingly over-compressed loudness wars derived style we're subjected to now.

Oh, in general the production is fabulous, and you’re absolute right that over-compression has ruined more than decade’s worth of albums, but I’d rather listen to a random live cut of Rid of Me. Such a great song.

Yuri-G is perfect on 4-track demos, otherwise I like the Rid of Me versions.

I agree that the volume on Highway 61 Revisited is an imperfection, but it's still one of my favorite tracks. I have no reverence for Bob Dylan and no interest in listening to him sing his lyrics.

Ironically, the best lyrics in the song are the first verse.