Review Summary: Not another beatles review! Oh God!
*As I have said before, if you want a normal review, go click on the other options. This is a mixture of my own beautiful brand of philosophy, musical criticism, and depending on the review, humor.*
I'm gonna lay this down right now: if everybody just chilled out, world problems would disappear simultaneously. And you know what helps me chill out? Certain things. Things, man. I'm sure you have a couple. For me, poppin on some Futurama helps me get chill. Its amusing to me how the world ends in every episode, or someone horribly dies, but its no biggie. We laugh, and all is forgotten. Lord of the Rings helps me chill out. I read about a fantastical place and the people in it, with their own charms and whatnot. It's an isolated little dream scape. I like that. Music helps too, albums like Songs From the Wood. Or Suck it and See, or In the Court of the Crimson King, or Mirage. They spend valuable time to build up a world- a place, separate from yours, with different people and ideas. You become acquainted with the album, and if its truly great, it becomes your friend. Now you see, I like these things, im not sure if you do. I like the idea that an artist- a representative in the best aspects of human nature- can create literally anything he wants and give it a life. A feeling, a touch, a sound. It's quite beautiful, and it's why im a member of the increasingly small percentage of people who still thinks that humans are truly, remarkable creatures.
Enough philosophy, lets talk music. The purpose of the first paragraph was to inform you of what I thought made the perfect album. Abbey Road, in my opinion, is the complete apex of the human soul. Actually, I won't say that. Its a shining, towering testament to what humans can achieve. It is a benchmark, that sits there for all to admire. The musical genius that it took to even conceive some of the melodies and ideas on this album blow my f*cking mind.
The lyrics are fantastically original and, as I stated before, innocent and introspective. The melodies are absolutely dazzling in their complexly simple (?) note runs, and each song has a personality and a theme.
Come Together 5/5
The song starts with a really cool bass and some drums -
No, go read some other review if you want some completely stupid track by track overview of what sounds your hearing. It doesn't matter what sounds your hearing. It doesn't matter if I hear a dog and a barbie doll having sex on ecstasy in an Oceanic Airlines bathroom, what matters is the feel, or the aura of the song, and more extensively, the album. You see, Abbey Road crafts a magnificent world and feel. From the album cover, to the 'End', there Is a consistent feel and scope.
Some people (Who I call Nazis) criticize this album. My idiot friend (Whose favorite album ever is Hot Fuss by The Killers) tells me that this album is garbage, because of the many 'duds'. I obviously had no clue what songs he was referring to, and he elaborates on his genius thesis by telling me that “Maxwell's Silver Hammer is a stupid song with a stupid plot and doesn't make any sense. And it sounds stupid”.
Fine. Let's put this to the test. I challenge anyone-ANYONE, famous in music- Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Nicki Minaj, I don't care, pick one-to come up with a song with as original a premise, as catchy a melody, and as musically well executed as Maxwell's Hammer-and have the album it was on be regarded as one of the top 10 or so musical albums ever. How well do you think, even by a great band such as Nirvana, anyone else could pull off a song about a child psychopath murderer-and have every single demographic, including kids and adults, listening to the song?
The producing on this album Is really instrumental in it's sound. In the song 'Octtopus's Garden', you truly feel like you are underwater, and you have a starfish for a best friend. 'I Want You' sounds like the world is coming apart at the seams. 'The End' Sounds like good friends coming together to have a friendly convergence of musical talents. The producing, especially on the horns, is truly remarkable because instead of sharp sounds, the instruments are drenched in reverb and have a better flow to them.
Abbey Road really gets it. After making arguably 4 or 5 masterpieces, how do you compete with yourself? They knew they could not match the scope of Rubber Soul and Revolver, the drug haze of Sgt Pepper, the eclecticism of the white album, or the hypnotic redundancy of MMT. The Beatles got what the album was all about. It was a statement. Rubber Soul was there statement to the world that the Beatles are now the greatest thing on the planet. Sgt Pepper was their statement to the world that drugs are cool, and the Beatles are cool. Abbey Roads statement is much more complex and deep-its a statement that music is as essential to human soul as water or food.
