Vinyl Reports

At the musical crossroads of high fidelity and 1960s pop music, there are often significant discrepancies that can hinder many an audiophile’s enjoyment of vintage recordings. For example, it is well known that the American editions of recordings by The Beatles were highly altered by their U.S. record label Capitol to the point where serious fans of the band tend to prefer the original UK mono mixes — i.e., the ones The Beatles worked on directly and approved — and many of them have since argued that subsequent U.S. reissues/remasters have yet to match the quality of the UK versions.

Fortunately for fans of The Monkees, a new release from Rhino’s esteemed High Fidelity reissue series takes those very rare extra steps to deliver a significant update of the band’s November 1967 smash hit album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., which was released on October 3, 2025. In short, this new edition is immediately better than any version issued before it. One important reason: Pisces was cut to vinyl from the true original stereo master tape for the very first time — ever! (More on all that in a bit, of course.)

Before we go much further, let’s look at the DNA of what went into the making of this new 2025 Rhino Hi-Fi LP reissue of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., and why it is particularly special. From official press materials, we learn a bit of why this Pisces is so different than any previous version of it: “Although the album has been reissued before, the original stereo masters were notoriously difficult to access and have never been used for vinyl — until now. Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. is the first vinyl pressing sourced directly from the unaltered 1967 stereo master. Cut AAA by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, [this edition] restores the original dynamics and mix integrity without the compression or EQ added to the Colgems LPs, [and it was] pressed on 180-gram black vinyl and limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies.”

This limited edition of The Monkees’ Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. LP sports an SRP of $39.98, and it is available exclusively from Rhino’s official webstore right here. The LP itself comes housed in a plastic-lined audiophile-grade inner sleeve framed within a jet-black-paper exterior, in addition to coming with the typical Rhino Hi Fi series Obi-like informational strip down the left side. (If you’re a Monkees completist, an expanded, 4CD+7in-45 box set edition of Pisces is also available in the Rhino webstore for $69.98.)

Some additional perspective from the album’s aforementioned official press materials helps us further understand the backstory beneath this Monkees LP: “Released at the height of Monkeemania in November 1967, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. was The Monkees’ fourth consecutive No. 1 album — and their third release that year alone. It spent five weeks atop the Billboard 200 and earned double platinum certification. Building on the creative control they established with [May 1967’s] Headquarters, the album marked a turning point in the band’s sound, incorporating sharper lyrics, electric banjo, and one of the earliest uses of a Moog synthesizer on a rock album. Recorded amid a grueling tour schedule and across multiple studios, the sessions captured both the group’s growing studio ambitions and the fragmented pace of their late-’60s reality. The result was one of their most adventurous — and enduring — records.”

The new Rhino Hi-Fi edition of Pisces was overseen by Andrew Sandoval, who has championed the band for ages. In the album’s new liner notes (which can be found nestled inside the left-side gatefold as a spread that’s framed by tape-box images on the 4-page insert’s front and back sides), Sandoval — who is listed in the credits as handling “A&R Supervision” — offers compelling historical insights into the making of this reissue. In short, it seems that, while The Monkees were on that aforementioned intense national concert tour in 1967, recording sessions were squeezed in at several different studios around the country, including New York, Nashville, and Hollywood.

When it came time to make a production master for cutting lacquers to press the new album onto vinyl, the production team found sonic discrepancies between the tracks that had to be smoothed out to ensure a good listening experience from one song to the next. In those pre-digital days, by the time a new production master was created for Pisces, the album had been dubbed down twice to, quote, “adjust EQ, level, and compression settings for consistent cuts at RCA’s three plants in Indianapolis, Iowa; Rockaway, New Jersey; and Hollywood, California.” Such was the nature of analog tape/recording in those days — and thus, significant fidelity was lost with each subsequent generation.

While Sandoval didn’t go into deep details about exactly how they achieved the new disc mastering while maintaining a pure all-analog production chain, we can read between the lines that accomplishing this feat — again, by creating a fresh vinyl cut from the original unequalized master tape — required an enormous amount of planning to plot out every move necessary for track-by-track adjustments on-the-fly while cutting a fresh, first-gen lacquer. However they completed the task, it represents an unprecedented level of love and care for the music on Pisces — especially for a group that was initially not even a “real” band per se, but rather a four-man collective put together specifically for a 1960s American TV series about an imaginary group!

Preparing for this review, I broke out my original 1967 Colgems pressing of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. for a reference listen. It had been a while since I played this album, I must admit, and it struck me just how thin the music sounded. Arguably, those 1967 pressings were records designed for play on inexpensive but popular teenager-owned home stereos and sonically challenged AM radio back in the day, so full fidelity wasn’t necessarily a big concern at that time — it just had to sound great coming out of a 3in transistor radio speaker!

Accordingly, Rhino Hi-Fi’s Pisces reissue is literally a night-and-day listening experience. While the music itself remains entrenched in a mid-’60s production vibe — for a comparative example, think The Beatles’ Revolver (1966) vs. Abbey Road (1969) — the Pisces album sounds markedly richer, fuller, and punchier. The liner notes attest “this is the closest representation of the original masters ever offered publicly,” and the results seem to bear that assessment out.

There is definitely more definition of the instruments that were largely performed by studio session players, including producer Chip Douglas (who was also the original bassist in The Turtles), as well as bluegrass legend Doug Dillard, drummer Eddie Hoh (Donovan, the Bloomfield/Kooper/Stills Super Session band), and Moog synthesizer pioneer/promoter Paul Beaver.

With three of the four Monkees singing on Pisces, the vocal blend is quite rich at times. Stereo separation is also more distinct in that mid-’60s way, with some elements periodically hard-panned left or right. The hits here include some classic Monkees kickers such as the Goffin-King rocker “Pleasant Valley Sunday” (Side 2, Track 4), as well as Boyce & Hart’s “Words” (Side 1, Track 6) — tunes that reached No. 3 and No. 11, respectively, on the Billboard Top 100 chart that year. The rest of the album includes songs written by a virtual who’s who of pop songwriting at that time, including Jeff Barry, Leiber & Stoller, Ellie Greenwich, and even Harry Nilsson. Indeed, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. was a super-popular record, as it has been long-certified as double platinum, representing sales of more than two million copies.

One of my favorite songs on this album is the Lewis & Clark tune that Michael Nesmith sings lead on, “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ’Round?” (Side 2, Track 2), a neat country-rocker with a curiously compelling song structure. (Fun fact: I played “Hanging” for several years in a cool bubblegum-pop cover band!)

The album ends with one of The Monkees’ most driving churners, Goffin-King’s “Star Collector” (Side 2, Track 7), which was such a big hit in Japan that they resequenced the album over there by putting this track at the start of the record — and they also gave it a very different cover design too, as seen above!

Once again, I’m very impressed with this entry in the continually impressive Rhino High Fidelity series. And even though they didn’t use the original Colgems labels on the discs themselves (my only tiny nit to pick, really), the sound is so much better that this edition is — for me, at least — the definitive stereo version of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. there is. I should also note that this reissue also includes a lovely gatefold cover that the original LP never had — and the overall physical production values are much, much higher as well, as this version now boasts lovely glossy laminated cover art.

As for my ratings, I’m happy to give this new edition of Pisces a solid 9 for the Music, and an equally solid 8 for Sound — a marked improvement over my original, which would have been a 6 or 7 at best. (Footnote 1)

Bravo to the team at Rhino High Fidelity — and also to Andrew Sandoval — for yet another great job, and in putting in a fantastic effort to make this wonderful restoration of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. a reality. Now, can we get you Rhino Hi-Fi guys to do a super-nice reissue/upgrade of the rare mono version of The Monkees’ album that came after this one, April 1968’s The Birds, The Bees and The Monkees? (Thank you for your consideration.)

Author bio: Mark Smotroff is an avid vinyl collector who has also worked in marketing communications for decades. He has reviewed music for eCoustics, among others, and you can see more of his impressive C.V. at LinkedIn.

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Footnote 1: AP editor Mike Mettler adds: I tend to agree with Mark that the new Rhino Hi-Fi edition of Pisces is markedly better than my original 1967 Colgems LP (COS-104) — and it also trounces the version of Pisces that’s on opaque orange vinyl in my copy of Rhino’s April 2016 Classic Album Collection 10LP box set (R1 552706).

My Rhino Hi-Fi Pisces 180g LP was deep black and well-centered, and I detected no pops, clicks, or surface noise whatsoever on either side of the record. My ratings differ only slightly, however, as I’d give the Music an 8, and the Sound an 8.5. (That said, the last four tracks on Side 2 get a cumulative 8.5 for Music.) In particular, I continue to derive endless pleasure from the harmonies, end-of-song reverb crash, and overall production values on “Pleasant Valley Sunday” (Side 2, Track 4), and its songwriters, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, still get bonus points from me for having serene Mr. Green anticipate the modern-era phenomenon of having “a TV in every room” — but I digress.

I too hope that the Rhino powers that be continue upgrading The Monkees’ LP output in a similar fashion, as theirs is a catalog that only seems to garner finer appreciation as time continues marching onward.

THE MONKEES
PISCES, AQUARIUS, CAPRICORN & JONES LTD.
180g 1LP (Rhino)
MUSIC: 9
SOUND: 8

Original recordings produced by Chip Douglas
Original recording engineers: Hank Cicalo, Pete Abbott
Original recordings cut at RCA Studios in Hollywood, New York, and Nashville
2025 reissue A&R Supervision by Andre Sandoval
2025 vinyl cut from original analog master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearant Audio
2025 vinyl pressed at Optimal in Germany

Side 1
1. Salesman
2. She Hangs Out
3. The Door Into Summer
4. Love Is Only Sleeping
5. Cuddly Toy
6. Words

Side 2
1. Hard To Believe
2. What Am I Doing Hangin’ ’Round?
3. Peter Percival Patterson’s Pet Pig Porky
4. Pleasant Valley Sunday
5. Daily Nightly
6. Don’t Call On Me
7. Star Collector