Beatles' New Album

Issue of 2006-12-11 Posted 2006-12-04 Sasha Frere-Jones introduces clips from “Love” and other Beatles mashups. Listen here (8:53), or right-click to download. AND IN THE END - Beatles Magic "Martined" Yet Again The Beatles, a pop combo from England, have a new album. Or they don’t, depending on how you see it. They had a not-new album called “1” a few years ago, which became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. Lesson: even though every man, woman, and parakeet already owns many Beatles albums, they will buy these songs again, even if there is not a lick of newness involved. With “Love” (Capitol), there is a lick. The producer Sir George Martin, working with his son, Giles, has revisited the original Beatles recordings to provide a soundtrack for the Cirque du Soleil act “Love.” The Martins have created an eighty-minute Beatles mix tape using the well-known recordings, demo versions, and bits that were buried the first time around. (One significant benefit of “Love” is that the Martins worked from original multitrack tapes, and the songs get their best digital sound to date.) In several instances, they have blended elements of two or three Beatles songs to make a new composition. It is impossible to ruin this music—one would have to submerge “Come Together” under an ocean of tubas to subdue its cryptic badassery. But an ineptly sequenced mix tape can lessen the greatness of great songs, and “Love” manages to do this several times. The segues from “I Am the Walrus” into “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” into “Help!” may be supported by acrobatic stagecraft, but without bodysuits and backflips, these transitions are infelicitous. “Love” is not entirely redundant; the subtle tweaking of familiar songs is consistently smart and can sometimes be thrilling. So why not have less of what we all know and more reinvention? Bedroom mashup producers like Danger Mouse and Go Home Productions have been rearranging Beatles records for the past five years, and, when the Martins allow themselves to be equally irreverent, “Love” justifies its existence. In one track, the drum pattern from “Tomorrow Never Knows” (Ringo’s finest moment) is threaded into George Harrison’s “Within You Without You” to create a radically remixed song, emphasizing the strings and voice while blending in reversed tapes. It is gorgeous and odd, kind of like something the Beatles would do.	MOVIES THE THEATRE NIGHT LIFE CLASSICAL MUSIC ART PHOTOGRAPHY DANCE AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES ABOVE AND BEYOND TABLES FOR TWO ON AND OFF THE AVENUE RECORDINGS
— Sasha Frere-Jones

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