The Beatles - With The Beatles Review

The Beatles With The Beatles

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Tracklist:
1.It Won't Be Long
2.All I've Got To Do
3.All My Loving
4.Don't Bother Me
5.Little Child
6.Till There Was You
7.Please Mister Postman
8.Roll Over Beethoven
9.Hold Me Tight
10.You Really Got A Hold On Me
11.I Wann Be Your Man
12.Devil In Her Heart
13.Not A Second Time
14.Money

Release Date: 1963

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3.6
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TheKrabsman~Reviews~ (4.5)
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Karl Malone (4.5)
1963's "With the Beatles", the second album by the legendary pop group from Liverpool, boasts some o...

Alex DeLuccia (3.5)
...

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4.0
excellent

Alex -Slayer- Robertson USER (30 Reviews)

2009-09-19 | 10 comments | 316 views

Summary: With The Beatles is hardly a sophomore slump, as the band churn out more and more hits, creating some of the most timeless songs of their early career in the process.

It's hard to deny: With the Beatles is pretty much Please Please Me, Part 2. Released an impressive 8 months after their debut, the album has the same sound and structure as the album before it, which is both a potential blessing and curse for the band. Really, though, it's a good thing that they picked Please Please Me as the blueprints for their second album: their debut was a great release by an excitingly charismatic and talented group, and, for the most part, With the Beatles follows suit.

Like Please Please Me, With the Beatles starts off with one of the album's hardest-rocking (and best) songs; on the debut it was the charming "I Saw Her Standing There", but here it's the rowdy "It Won't Be Long", with the band freely chanting "yeah yeah"'s during the bouncy chorus. The band keeps up its streak with the smoothly appealing "All I've Got to Do", which, if not exactly innovative for the band, is one of the more easily enjoyable songs on the album. The Beatles then continue not to drop the ball with "All My Loving", which features some of the more impressive guitar-work on the album, and is just as catchy as the best songs on Please Please Me.

On his first songwriting credit with the band, George Harrison fumbles with "Don't Bother Me", where the band do a kind of musical sleepwalking until the frustratingly short guitar solo perks them up again, only to drop them off abruptly. Other songs on the album feature this same kind of monotonous half-playing: "Devil in Her Heart" (originally written by Richard P. Drapkin, a.k.a. "Ricky Dee"), which starts intriguingly with a tropical guitar part, quickly drops in quality with simply boring, if pleasant, songwriting and structure. The upbeat "Little Child" is also a somewhat entertaining diversion, but it doesn't amount to much when compared to other, better songs on the album such as "It Won't Be Long" and "All My Loving".

Thanks to "Till There Was You", however, The Beatles pick the ball back up again with one of the most inventive songs they had created at the time, with Ringo Starr's bongos and George Harrison's Spanish guitar creating a truly lovely musical environment, and one that hadn't been explored by the band before. The rollicking "Please Mister Postman" is also a standout, featuring some of the best vocal harmonies the group had done to date. Its unforgettable melody and striking harmonies show the band coming together in ways that hadn't been seen since "Twist and Shout". Best of all, unlike "Don't Bother Me" and "Devil in Her Heart", they sound genuinely excited to be playing the song. The effect continues with Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven", which has a fitting message for The Beatles: the song is essentially "out with the old and in with the new" in a musical sense, and the song doesn't do much to convince you that anything else would be appropriate.

"You Really Got a Hold On Me", a cover of a soul hit written by Smokey Robinson and performed by The Miracles, shows another side to The Beatles, with equal success. Much calmer in comparison to "Please Mister Postman" and "Roll Over Beethoven", the song still has a melody as catchy and infectious as the rowdier songs on the album. Despite the fact that the song is one of The Miracles' most revered, The Beatles still make it their own, and show that rock-and-rollers can have soul too. "You Really Got a Hold On Me" is followed by another rocker, "I Wanna Be Your Man" (which features Ringo Starr on lead vocals). The song is also a chugging rock-and-roll song that shows a rawness not seen anywhere else on the album.

Following the underwhelming "Not a Second Time", album closer "Money (That's What I Want)" is essentially With the Beatles' answer to "Twist and Shout". The success of the latter cannot be replicated easily, but The Beatles actually do a great job with it, if not matching the raw intensity of the Please Please Me highlight. In a way, it's fitting that the song is a cover of the first ever Motown hit, showing the kind of cultural barrier-breaking that The Beatles did.

Song by song, it's very possible that With the Beatles is actually a better album than their debut, which is quite a feat. The Beatles do no "evolving" or anything of the sort here, but rather make subtle yet significant changes to their songs to keep their audiences interested. As Lennon said on "It Won't Be Long": "It won't be long 'till I belong to you". For The Beatles, it wouldn't be long until the world belonged to them.

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