Listening to this package, it’s clearer than ever just how Revolver set the template for The Beatles’ future.
The book is of a very high standard, while the outtakes allow an alternative Revolver to come to life. The simple fact is that Revolver is a major high: quite possibly the best Beatles album, where adult themes and spiky attitudes coexist with pop conciseness and transcendent music. It’s the pinnacle of high modernism: dense, restless, impossibly alive.
These outtakes don't present the Beatles as infallible -- they have bad ideas, like the manic backing vocals that clutter "Taxman" -- but rather show their remarkable ability to collaborate as a unit, always seeking a fully-realized version of the song. They achieved that with the finished Revolver, but that doesn't mean that listening to the journey isn't worthwhile. Quite the opposite: It's a thrill of its own.
Anything that sheds new light on that miraculous music, that gives us more Beatles, can’t be bad. It’s Revolver, turn it up.
i am just so happy this album is finally listenable in stereo oh my god this is so much better than the previous mixes
Revolver finally has a proper stereo mix that beautifully enhances the original experience.