Review Summary: Some of The Beatles' best songs never made it to their full length LP's.
As if you think The Beatles couldn't get any better, they politely slap your face and tell you otherwise by handing you their last EP to be recorded by them (spiritually of course). "B-sides eh? They're probably just mere crumbs fallen off a preceding delicious dinner."
While the first three tracks on this compilation are perhaps thorns on a rose, everything following offers great and simple musicianship that you know The Beatles well for. You'd think that maybe these opening tracks, being fast and poppy on impulse would be a nice and invigorating start, but that's not the case. They come off more as off-putting (and even a little annoying depending on your preference of style of The Beatles,) compared to how The Beatles were able to improve their song-writing abilities in only a few years. They aren't bad by any means, but mixing them with the band's future style of ambiguity and enjoyment is like placing a trophy on a shelf next to some 3rd place ribbons. You make room for the trophy, correct?
I mean, as soon as "Rain" starts playing its delicate sun-drenched chords that start twirling around Lennon's stretching voice, you sit back , your eyes get heavy, and you pop a soda open. Maybe it's "Revolution" and its bumping lo-fi guitar that carries the urgent lyrics of political refuge that makes you flip the chair and pitches the attitude you desire. The funky bass of "The ballad of John and Yoko" make the catchy folk song all the more impressive. All three are key songs to this album among the other three pretty good singles, but these tunes bow down to the title track of this EP, which is widely considered as one of The Beatles' greatest classics. It stars out with an almost melancholy-like beginning, but like the songs says, "take a sad song and make it better", that's exactly what it does. The mind-numbing coda at the end of the song is to die for.
A lot of these songs are timeless indeed, including the first three, it's just that they seem to run like kittens in a group full of
lions, yet every Beatles song has its delicious charm in one way or another. "Remember to let
them into your heart."
