The Beatles – Abbey Road
The music is tempered with uncertainly and longing, suggestive of adventure, reflecting a sort of vague wisdom; it’s wistful, earnest music that also feels deep, even though it really isn’t. But above all it just feels happy and joyous, an explosion of warm feeling rendered in sound. And then, the perfect capper, finishing with a song called “The End”, which features alternating guitar solos from John, George, and Paul and a drum solo from Ringo. It was an ideal curtain call from a band that just a few years earlier had been a bunch of punk kids from a nowheresville called Liverpool with more confidence than skill. This is how you finish a career. (Read the Full Review)
The Beatles – The Beatles
If The Beatles feels more like a collection of songs by solo artists, they’ve also each got more going on than we’d realized. John is even more hilarious than we’d imagined, wanting nothing more than to puncture the Beatles’ myth (“Glass Onion”), but he’s also displaying a disconcerting willingness to deal with painful autobiography in a direct way (“Julia”). Paul’s getting disarmingly soft and fluffy (“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, “I Will”), while simultaneously writing the roughest, rawest tunes in his Beatles oeuvre (“Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “Helter Skelter”). George is finding a better way to channel his new Eastern-influenced spiritual concerns into a rock context, while his songwriting toolkit continues to expand (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Long Long Long”). And even Ringo Starr writes a decent song, a country & western number with weirdly thick and heavy production (“Don’t Pass Me By”). Listening as the tracks scroll by, there’s a constant feeling of discovery. (Read the Full Review)
The Beatles – Past Masters
Past Masters is the ugly but brilliant sibling of the Beatles discography. Originally released as two separate discs in 1988, it’s a catchall for all the stuff the Beatles officially released during their existence that wasn’t intended for their albums (and didn’t end up on the after-the-fact album Magical Mystery Tour). It’s slapped together chronologically, so it begins with an unprepossessing alternate take of “Love Me Do” and ends with the ludicrous doodle “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)”. And, between them, it includes some of the best pop songs ever recorded– scratch that: some of the best pop singles ever recorded. (Read the Full Review)
The Beatles – Let It Be
As the 1960s wound down, so did the Beatles. The symmetry was perfect: youthful energy, optimism, and camaraderie had given over to cynicism, discord, and looking out for number one. As the decade’s final year began, the White Album was still riding high on the charts and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack was days away from release. But the Beatles were in serious trouble. Nothing about being in the band was enjoyable or easy. The power vacuum left by the death of manager Brian Epstein a year and a half earlier had never been satisfactorily filled; Apple Corps, the multi-media company started by the band a year earlier, was bleeding money; and toughest of all, the once-Fab Four didn’t generally enjoy being in the same room together. All were either married or close to it, closing in on 30, and tremendously weary of all they’d been through. (Read the Full Review)
