Darren Staples/ReutersFans of the Beatles wait to buy the band’s collected works on a new CD set as well as a video game featuring some of the Fab Four’s greatest hits.
Aside from being the last palindromic day we’ll see on the calendar until Oct. 10, 2010, Wednesday is also potentially the most momentous occasion in Beatles history since the time you learned what “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” really stood for: it’s the day when the band’s entire catalog is being released in newly remastered stereo and monaural versions (which The New York Times critic Allan Kozinn writes about here), along with a new video game, The Beatles: Rock Band, that’s built around the music of the Fab Four.
It’s also an opportunity for rock critics to do something they haven’t been able to do in nearly 40 years: review the original albums of the Beatles. So how are the Liverpool lads faring in the press so far?
Rolling Stone (whose very first issue featured John Lennon on the cover) gives five stars to the boxed set of the Beatles stereo albums. In a review by Anthony DeCurtis, the magazine says that the remastered albums “make the original recordings sound newly invigorated and alive, whether you’re listening on standard earbuds or a high-end system.” Mr. DeCurtis adds:
The buoyancy of “Something” becomes more comprehensible when you hear clearly Paul McCartney’s nimble bass line. You knew that “Twist and Shout” featured one of John Lennon’s most visceral performances, but here you can feel his vocal cords shred. The horns on “Good Morning Good Morning” roar, driving the song in a way you may not have noticed before. Lennon and George Harrison’s guitars on “You Can’t Do That” sharpen to a gleaming edge.
The indie-leaning Web site Pitchfork.com (whose contributors are largely too young to remember Wings, let alone the Beatles) gives its coveted 10.0 rating to albums like “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” but a mere 8.8 to “With the Beatles.” (Tom Ewing writes that it is “simultaneously a quickly turned-around cash-in and a record of real generosity and integrity.”) In an overview of the entire remastering project, Mark Richardson geeks out with waveform illustrations of what songs like “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” looked like on various Beatles CD releases.
Up north, Greg Quill gives a generous review to the remastered CDs in The Toronto Star. After acknowledging the “$300 asking price for the 13 studio albums, plus double CD of non-album, extended-play and alternative cuts, as well as a DVD of mini-documentaries with rare footage, voice-overs and photographs” (which he calls “a small sacrifice for such a noble and exhaustingly complete post-modern masterpiece”), Mr. Quill writes that the boxed set is “a wonderful thing”:
The songs do have additional dimension and clarity, with each sound ascribed a distinct position in the stereo spectrum. Musicians and hi-fi perfectionists may actually be able to hear the click of a plectrum on George Harrison’s steel guitar strings, the spittle frothing at the end of Paul McCartney’s tongue, the sardonic sneer that shapes John Lennon’s vowels and even the occasional squeak of Ringo’s bass drum pedal.
They will also hear succinct evidence of each player’s individual technique: little errors in timing and quirks of musical judgment that were buried in the mono mixes for the greater good of the song.
His review ends on a suitably Beatles-esque food metaphor (“Savoy Truffle,” anyone?), concluding that “listening to the mono set is like dipping into fresh, organic guacamole. Listening to the stereo set is akin to being served a dish of chemically enhanced avocados, tomatoes, onions, lime and salt, and a mortar and pestle. Make of it what you will, but it probably won’t taste like the real thing.”
He’s not the only reviewer hungry for new Beatles product. In The Washington Post, Peter Kaufman makes no apologies for the extended food metaphor that opens his review. He writes:
You sit down at your favorite neighborhood restaurant and order beef bourguignon. Soon a team of waiters approaches and lays it out in front of you — but unassembled, each ingredient in its own little saucer: floured and browned beef cubes, sauteed pearl onions, a carrot, a carafe of full-bodied Beaujolais, some garlic, the whole Julia Child rigmarole.
It’s all perfectly prepared, but still. No matter how fine the individual components, they’re not what you want to eat. You want beef bourguignon. And that’s also why, when it comes to the lavish new Beatles box sets, you might want to choose the finished dish: “The Beatles in Mono,” rather than stereo. Especially if you like to listen through headphones.
But some unenthusiastic critics say “Wait,” or, simply, “Honey Don’t.” You can gauge the overall mood of David Bauer’s review for The Associated Press from his opening sentence: “Hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since the Beatles sang ‘You Never Give Me Your Money,’” he writes.
“Given that we’re in an era where artists have a hard time convincing fans they should pay for ANY music,” Mr. Bauer writes that the remastered Beatles catalog “falls into the selling-ice-to-Eskimos category.” He adds:
Now, this is the greatest catalog in popular music, so if your collection is Beatle-less, the box is a terrific buy. Really, though, what serious pop music fan doesn’t already own some of these albums already? … It sounds great. It ALWAYS sounded great, frankly. For an average person with an average sound system, the differences aren’t going to make it seem like an entirely new listening experience.
And in The Daily Telegraph, Gordon Rayner writes that he “can’t work up any excitement” about the new CDs. “Does this make me a total Philistine?” he asks. “And am I the only person with more than a couple of dozen records who has never bought a single Beatles song?”
His non-assessment cheekily concludes:
Were there any critical raves or pans that you particularly enjoyed? Have you already bought the new Beatles CDs, and if so, what do you think of them? Are you boycotting them entirely? Post a comment below and let us know.Even though the Fab Four sold millions of singles in their heyday (when buying just one of their songs wasn’t seen as a crime) they have taken on such mythological status since they split nearly 40 years ago that musical mongrels like me (with everything from Radiohead to Abba in my collection) are left feeling that unless we’re intending to spend hours listening to Rubber Soul or Abbey Road in a trance-like state of ecstasy, we’re simply not worthy.
So I’m sorry Paul, Ringo and EMI, but I’m afraid I won’t be among those rushing out to buy the ‘new’ boxed set, and, dare I say it, I might go home and listen to my Best of the Rolling Stones album instead.
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