The Beatles - Past Masters

To this point I've avoided the very early Beatles releases, not because I truly didn't want to listen to them, but because they seemed a bit reliant on covers and typical early 60s rock style and I was more interested in their later work. Past Masters is a collection of all the Beatles singles that didn't make it onto a regular album, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the first disc, which covered up through the Help! era. I still preferred the stuff on disc two from when I'm better versed in their work, but there's quite a number of good songs on the whole collection. It doesn't all come together into a cohesive vision as well as their better albums, but there's a lot of enjoyable music here, a nice, pretty eclectic collection of tunes in a wide range of styles.

There's nothing really like their absolute heaviest or must experimental work, these were singles after all. But still, before all the drugs and fame, they were a damned competent pop act, and that definitely shows right from the beginning. It starts off with a song I definitely remember but I'm not sure I mentally attributed to the band, "Love Me Do". I knew the title was a Beatles song before I heard it, but the down-tempo sound and memorable harmonica hook were a surprise to hear, and it was a nice introduction of the group to their British fans. Some of the most famous Beatles songs ever are sprinkled through here, including "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "I Feel Fine". I don't like all of them the same amount, but they're all pretty hard to dislike at least, and they mix well with the songs I had never heard before. Some of the more interesting ones on the first disc like "Long Tall Sally" and "Slow Down" are covers of more soulful artists, but they're able to pull them off without embarrassing themselves. And by the time you get to stuff like "I'm Down", they're really turning into the true musical geniuses they would become known as.

A few of the tracks on the collection actually do appear on albums, but are still included here because they're different versions, and this becomes more common on disc two, especially when you get to the situation with Let It Be, which had a few singles taken from it before it was shelved and then re-produced before release. Still though, despite the familiar music, there's still a lot to like here. I might like "Revolution" more than The Beatles' "Revolution 1", "The Inner Light" is yet another worthwhile Indian-style experiment from George, and while it's sappy, "Hey Jude" is one of the group's most famous and sing-alongable tunes. Stuff like "Paperback Writer" is solidly good, catchy when the band was more focused on other things, and it ends with "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" is possibly the group's oddest song, sounding like something the members of Monty Python might record, while still somehow feeling like a fitting B-Side for their last ever single. It doesn't amaze as much as their best work, but Past Masters is about 90 minutes of songs that are definitely worth hearing a few times.

The Beatles - Let It Be

This is the final Beatles album to be released (although it was mostly recorded before Abbey Road), and also the least of the ones I've heard. That doesn't make it bad, in fact I like most of it. It just has less going for it, fewer all time great songs and just not as much of the pure inspiration they showed in the few years previous. The thing is, it's at least somewhat intentional, because it was recorded to sound more or less like a live performance, although they lost some of that when they brought on Phil Spector to produce new versions of the tracks. It's still there though, the songs are less meticulously crafted, relying more on pure folksy charm, which they just don't do quite as well. They still play a pretty good tune, especially accompanied by Billy Preston on keyboards to fill out what otherwise could have been a fairly sparse sound.

Now here's the part where I talk about some individual songs. "Across the Universe" might actually be the only one I'd heard before getting the album, and I don't think it was part of the same recording sessions. There's something haunting and alien about it, a nice break from the rest of the album. There's a pretty good chance I had heard the title track too, and it's a nice one, the kind of Paul McCartney song that doesn't light your hair on fire but you never mind hearing. There are quite a few songs that feature both Paul and John sharing the lead, which is a nice way to send the band off, my favorite being the opener "Two of Us". George's contributions are relatively slight this time, though there is something likable about the simplicity of "I Me Mine". It's too bad there wasn't a place for Ringo to sing, he being the only one to sound significantly different from the others usually. There's not really a lot to say, many of the songs featured are listenable and fun but not particularly memorable. That's a good way to sum up the album, I guess. Not the best possible way for the band to end, but not the worst either.

The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

This isn't so much a true album as an EP of songs from the movie combined with a few singles to fill out the track list. As such, it's a bit less cohesive than other works by The Beatles, but also features a higher than average amount of songs that I've actually heard before. It's mostly pretty catchy, and also has a bit of their creepier mood keeping it interesting. I haven't actually seen the Magical Mystery Tour film, and I think it would be interesting to see how all of the songs on the first half play into it. "Flying" is an instrumental, but the rest are otherwise pretty normal for The Beatles, mostly sung by Paul. Two standouts on that side are George's "Blue Jay Way" and John's "I Am the Walrus", which have a bit more of an edge to them.

The parade of radio hits on the second side is pretty impressive, with only one song ("Baby You're a Rich Man") that I wasn't familiar with. It's a pretty good one though, and along with the rest, especially "Hello Goodbye" and "Strawberry Fields Forever", it's a very fun, listenable set. I tend to prefer The Beatles songs that branch out a bit, but one of their strengths is definitely just well-constructed pop songs. It makes for a record that doesn't reach the brilliant heights of some of their other work, but is still perfectly fine for what it is.

The Beatles - Revolver

I figure what the hell while I'm at it, right? No, but I'll definitely be slowing down after this one. Gotta spread it out a little.

Of the five Beatles albums I've listened to, this one felt like it had the best balance between all four musicians. I mean, if you look at the White Album, they all contributed a lot, but things will look like that when you have 30 songs together. But just on the 14 tracks here, you see remarkable accomplishments by all of them. Obviously Ringo is limited, but his drumming always helps a song and "Yellow Submarine" is one of his more famous and better vocal performances. The song's strange and a bit childish, but it's still a classic. There's quite a strong concentration of George to be found, as he opens the album with the clever and catchy "Taxman", and soon thereafter adds "Love You Too", which has a similar eastern feel to "Within You Without You" though I dare say it's a better song. "I Want to Tell You" is more forgettable but not bad. I've noticed that it's not hard to tell John and Paul apart, but does anyone agree that George and Ringo sound like them in their deeper registers, respectively? Oh well.

Paul has sort of a tendency to do bouncy, upbeat songs that elicit feelings of cheesiness as much as genuine affection, but I think Revolver has some of his strongest work. "Eleanor Rigby" is an obvious good one, helping signal the band's transition from pop to something much more interesting, and is still deeply enjoyable to listen to. "For No One" is another particularly good composition, and the rest of his contributions are at the least solid, impeccably crafted songs. John has always stuck out to me a bit more than the rest, and he fails to disappoint here yet again. I could take or leave "Doctor Robert", but "I'm Only Sleeping" is one of the best songs of his that sounds very much like just a Beatles song, and he caps off the album with "Tomorrow Never Knows", which apparently attempts to recreate the experience of taking acid and manages to be quite trippy without ever sacrificing its success as an enjoyable song. He has a couple more tracks which, like Paul's are of particular consistent quality. Revolver is one of the most acclaimed and probably important albums ever released, and while I can't say it blew me away, it's still impressive throughout and frequently steps into moments of brilliance.

The Beatles - Abbey Road

I didn't know this until recently, but there was a weird situation with the making of this album. Let It Be is the band's final studio album to be released, but for the most part Abbey Road was the last to be written and recorded. There were issues with the former's production and the members knew the group was falling apart, so they decided to do one last project as a band before splitting. It was finished and put out while Let It Be was sitting on the shelf, and I have to say it's a pretty nice note to go out on.

While it would be hard to match the eclectic nature of the thirty songs on the White Album, they do a good job of coming close here. It has the best work of George or Ringo, with "Here Comes the Sun" about tied in my mind with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as the former's best Beatles song and "Octopus's Garden" being the only really good song that I'm aware of the latter writing. "Something" is another good George song, showing that he really was getting good at this. "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is one of Paul's odder ideas, an upbeat though ultimately not-that-catchy tune about a murderer, though it's followed by "Oh! Darling", which is a bit cheesy but also a hell of a lot better. John's contributions to the first side are really good as expected, with everyone knowing "Come Together" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" being one of the band's most interesting songs to me, and a long way to come from things like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".

Of course the second side is most famous for the medley of unfinished songs turned into a long musical suite, though the couple tracks before it starts are nice too. I already mentioned "Here Comes the Sun", and "Because" has a nice eerie quality to it. The medley does a lot of recalling, bringing back sounds and lyrics from earlier tracks and creating something that feels unique for the band. It has some of their better pure experimental instrumentation and some standout moments, even if I'm not quite sure it reaches the pinnacle of what it could have been. It ends majestically in what is fittingly called "The End", and then the album closes with a snippet of a ditty called "Her Majesty". As a recording by a world famous band that was coming apart at the seams, it's a remarkable achievement and a darn good album.

The Beatles - Rubber Soul

I've seen Rubber Soul marked as the time when the Beatles started really coming into their own as musicians, creating songs that went beyond simply ditties about love (although that's still a common theme), and beyond that, crafting cohesive albums and popularizing the idea that they could be more than a group of singles with some filler holding them together. It's only their second studio release featuring no cover songs, and for the most part the praise seems to hold true. While I don't think it's quite a great album, it's a very consistent song, it's just that the songs tend to be good to very good rather than outstanding. That's not to say that there aren't standouts, because there are, whether they be among the band's dozens of very famous radio hits or just damn good compositions that I'm hearing for the first time. It doesn't impress me quite like the other albums I've heard, but it's still darn good, especially when you remember this came out in 1965.

The song I'm most familiar with is "In My Life", which I remember best from being the theme song in covered form of Providence, a show my mom used to watch a lot. I didn't realize it was a Beatles song for a while, but that doesn't prevent it from holding up as a very nice, nostalgic little tune. "Drive My Car", with the most traditional rock sound on the album and some nice piano in the chorus, and "Nowhere Man" are the other ones I'm sure I've heard before. The other ones that stick out tend to be primarily Lennon's work, though McCartney's "Michelle" is very nice and the two Harrison songs make me continue to wonder why his presence was so limited on these albums. Not that much though, because he was working with, uh... Lennon and McCartney. "Norwegian Wood" has its own thing going for it, and I really like "Girl" a lot, and I especially think the way the backing vocals during the bridge are later mimicked by guitars is something of a stroke of genius. Rubber Soul is a really important release in the band's history, and a fairly enjoyable one as well.

The Beatles

The famed "White Album". It seems somewhat divisive among Beatles fans, some see it as an overlong, bloated piece of work, others as an amazing, eclectic collection of songs. I fall in with the latter. It is at times self-indulgent and several of the tracks are just silly wastes of time, and the eight minute "Revolution 9" is seen as the greatest offender. It's just a long mishmash of different sounds, voice samples and snippets of things that don't amount to anything approaching actual music. I might have been bothered by it if half of modern bands didn't do something similar at some point or another, but I just see it as one of many experiments on the album. There are some genuinely ingenious songs to be found here, and even the less than great ones mesh together with them to create 93 minutes of something pretty brilliant.

It was recorded at a tumultuous time for the band, when they were starting to break apart and begin the transition from a cohesive group into four solo artists. Ringo quit for a couple weeks, there were disagreements, and entire songs were recorded by a single individual alone in the room. "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and "Julia" are both pretty much solo efforts by Paul and John respectively, and I enjoy both quite a bit (though for very different reasons). There are so many good tracks to be found, I find myself strongly disagreeing with the notion that it should have been pared down to a single album, with the small caveat that I find the the first disc is a fraction more enjoyable than the second, although that might just be because it has four more opportunities to do something different.

With songs like "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", I become more convinced that George should have had a larger presence with the band, and even Ringo writes something competent, as well as singing the schmaltzy but fun final track. Some other favorites include the highly referential "Glass Onion", "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", the folksy "Rocky Raccoon", the classic riff of "Birthday", and surprisingly hectic and dirty "Helter Skelter". This still only just begins to scratch the surface of the treasure trove of great music that the White Album is. I rarely find myself enjoying sitting through double albums, but there's a hardly a dull moment to be found here.

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

With all of the Beatles' music being remastered and rereleased a week ago, it seemed like the time was right to start listening to them. I chose Sgt. Pepper's for no reason in particular other than liking some of the songs already, and I predictably liked it a lot. It's sort of a failed early attempt at a concept album. The idea is that the Lonely Hearts Club Band is a real group and the album is a recording of one of their concerts, but that only comes through in the first two tracks and the second to last. Other than that, it's just a nice collection of songs; four by John, one by George, and the rest by Paul.

I've heard a lot of these songs before, but the ones I haven't are enjoyable too. Even simple, somewhat dopey songs like "Fixing a Hole" and "When I'm Sixty-Four" have interesting elements to them. "With a Little Help From My Friends", the only track sung by Ringo, is good for getting into the mood of the album proper after the opening title track, and it was a revelation when I realize Joe Cocker covered it in The Wonder Years theme song. I'm not convinced "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is really about drugs, but either way it's a nice, trippy little tune. I don't have to talk about "Getting Better" because it has to be in a commercial every year by law. George's "Within You Without You" is a unique track, infused with an Indian sound that serves as a nice breather in the middle of the album. "She's Leaving Home" was the best surprise of the songs I hadn't heard yet, and "A Day in the Life" is pretty much the perfect closer. Every song transitions smoothly into the next, and it's just a really easy to listen to collection of songs that comes together really well into quite a good album. I'm not sure it was the perfect jumping on point for the band, but I don't think it was a bad one.