THE STOOGES - Fun House (Mobile Fidelity Pressing) THE STOOGES

This is a record on which unabandoned feeling takes precedence, primal energy surges to the fore, outsider attitude snarls with destructive force, electrifying chaos assumes the form of wild joyousness — all of which might very well be impossible to put into words. Legendary Village Voice journalist Robert Christgau even admitted “language wasn’t designed for the job” of conveying what many critics and artists believe to be the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll statement.

Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 45RPM 2LP set marks the first time this 1970 landmark is available at 45RPM speed. This definitive-sounding copy benefits from the extra groove space by playing with enhanced definition, greater emotionalism, and more realistic ambience than prior versions.

From beginning to end, the live-in-the-room characteristics and sudden mayhem closely identified with Fun House and Don Gallucci’s esteemed production — the unrelenting sense of groove; the sheer impact of the rhythms; the bleed of the unmuted volumes; the ferocity of Pop’s heat-seeking vocals; the bruising churn of the low end; the grit, grime, and grind of four dudes and auxiliary saxophonist Steven Mackay bent on breaking into another dimension — emerge with gripping presence, body, and power. The Stooges’ most controlled, focused, and hot-wired creation, Fun House now adopts the sonic vigor of the atom bomb or hydroelectric plant to which Christgau thought of comparing it.

Often imitated and never duplicated, the results continue to melt minds more than 50 years after Pop and company got loose. Ranked the 94th greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone, said to be “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll album ever made” by Jack White, and championed by everyone from vaunted critics such as Lester Bangs and Ben Edmonds to musicians like Henry Rollins and Steve Albini, Fun House feels alright. It’s gonna stick you deep inside.