When I first heard about The Beatles releasing LOVE (JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!), I gagged. The sheer audacity of these guys, constantly reworking, remastering, and rehashing their catalog and spitting it back at us, forcing us to purchase it over and over again. When I heard it was remixed by George Martin and his son for a Cirque de Soleil show, I cringed. When I saw the subtitle "At The Mirage" on the cover, I threw up in my mouth a little. The Beatles in Vegas! God, how I wanted to hate it. Then I listened to it. I apologize; this album is excellent, inventive, sonically impressive, outstanding.
The Beatles have had all of these adjectives and more used to describe them over the last 40+ years, and when they were in their creative prime it's hard to argue that they didn't earn them. Like the Pitchfork review says, they were so good that they're no longer interesting to talk about. In fact, I get sick of hearing about them, and I'm a Beatles FAN. However, this impressive 21st century updating of their best material just might make them interesting again.
The best thing about this: it's not a "best of" (purists, you may leave now, and take a copy of 1 on your way out). On this sprawling 26 track suite, the songs seemlessly flow from one to the next; the sheer scope of this project is impressive, and overall the source material has never sounded better. But while a number of their songs remain mostly intact, lovingly tweaked and augmented with various instrumental clips, the fun of this collection is the artful reinterpretation of various songs remixed to fit right in with the current "mashup" music landscape. Hearing "Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing" and "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter", "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" blended together is nothing short of a revelation. It also reinforces my theory that producer George Martin was the glue that held this foursome together as they personally began to unravel during their final few albums.
The highlight for me is the reworking of "Strawberry Fields Forever", which starts with a smooth transition from Lennon's initial acoustic strumming to the final psychedelic masterwork, and closes with musical flourishes taken from "Sgt. Pepper", "In My Life", "Penny Lane", "Piggies", and "Hello, Goodbye" among others (yes, they're so familiar at this point that they might as well be tattooed on my brain)--the overall effect is simply stunning. And while not every track is a slam dunk (the string-laden "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", now 100% Clapton-free, is a little too maudlin for me, and no one needs more "Octopus' Garden"), it's a great representative cross-section, as well as a creative revisiting, of the Beatles' best songs.
Say what you will about this collection from a commercial aspect, but this sonic recreation of their best songs reminds me why I loved The Beatles in the first place: they were peerless songwriters, and a fun pop band that didn't take itself as seriously as their fans do. Viva Los Beatles!
(Great. There's a 5.1 surround version I haven't heard.)
