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Thursday, August 1, 2013

Beatles-Revolver

Revolver


Quite simply the greatest album by the greatest band of all-time. A mind boggling collage of perfect songcraft and sheer sonic joy, Revolver, like its predecessor Rubber Soul, stunned the pop world when released in 1966. In terms of Beatle evolution, Revolver catches the Fabs in the midst of their most perfect phase -- more sophisticated than the Mop-Top years of 1963-64, yet more restrained than the experimental Later Years. Lush psychedelic tones flourish throughout, enhancing, yet never overwhelming the colorful song textures. Witness George's painstaking backward guitar solo on "I'm Only Sleeping" for a textbook example of innovation with restraint. Mesmerizing rhythmic structures, which pop-up all over, may well be the most inventive of the band's career. Ringo's percussive tom rolls transform John's single-chord mind-bender "Tomorrow Never Knows" into the most hypnotic three-minutes of acid-drenched pleasure ever recorded. Never have Beatle guitars sounded so bright, trebly and as bitingly distorted as they do on "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "She Said, She Said". On the gentle flipside are the baroque sophistication of "For No One" and the epic neo-classicism of "Eleanor Rigby". Gently washed in the mournful hues of George Martin's perfectly scored string arrangement, "Eleanor" emerges as Paul's most mature and, quite possibly, most beautiful song. Sing-a-long classics "Good Day Sunshine" and "Yellow Submarine" prove that fun was indeed still fashionable in the Swingin' Summer of '66. Every aspect of Revolver--from the biting social commentary of "Taxman" to the childish joyride of "Yellow Submarine"-- clicks so perfectly. A 1996 Mojo Reader's Poll ranked Revolver as the greatest album ever recorded. But Revolver, like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, is more than merely a great rock album-- it is unquestionably one of the 20th Century's greatest works of art.


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