TheHaight

Decontextualized, movie music is dull and boring. Lots of aimless wandering interspersed with atmospherics with no reference point.

Except for one overwrought failure each from John (“Across the Universe”) and Paul (“The Long and Winding Road”) this is, song-for-song, probably stronger than anything they’d released since Revolver, if not Rubber Soul. After emptying the vaults for The Beatles and eschewing the high concept of Sgt Pepper the band, still in disarray unfortunately, just got to the work of writing and playing good rock tunes. The goofs are still here, but rather than being precious ... read more

A melancholy record. It’s the end of the Beatles, the end of the 60s, the end of innocence. Knowing that they knew this was the end of the line, probably, lends extra meaning to everything. John is still checked out for the most part. Aside from the heavy “Come Together” and the seven-minute foreplay excursion, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” he’s only good for a few fragments here and there. Ringo wishes he could make it all go away. Paul can’t ... read more

The only new song worth the trouble is George’s “It’s All Too Much” which, coincidentally, runs a couple of minutes too long. George Martin’s movie music doesn’t add anything and neither do “All Together Now”, “Hey Bulldog”, or “Only a Northern Song”. By far the least useful of their mainstream releases. And come to think of it, the movie was pretty bad, too.