Review Summary: The Capitol Albums Volume One, is a compilation of eome of The Beatles Early American releases. Overall, it's a solid collection, but it has its flaws.
This compilation, entitled The Capitol albums Volume One, contains The Beatles Early American albums Meet the Beatles, The Beatles Second Album, Something New, and Beatles ’65, all of which were released in 1964. These albums, as I said before, are American releases, so they differ from The Beatles albums released in The U.K. For each of the albums on here, there is a mono and stereo version for each song. If you don’t know what this means, Mono and Stereo are just different mixes. Personally I prefer the mono mixes, but they’re both good. One of the drawbacks of this box set is the packaging. Although it’s not that big a deal, it can get annoying. Instead of album cases, the CDs come in small paper sleeves which the CDs always fall out of. Because they are in paper sleeves, the CD’s get scratched easily. There is also a booklet that always falls out of the box that everything goes in. Because the box that contains the CDs and booklet is pretty big, it can’t fit in a typical CD holder, so it can’t be stored conventionally. As I said before, this isn’t a huge problem or anything, but it can get annoying because if you are holding the box and you let your guard down for one second, everything could come tumbling out. Well, now I’ll give a brief description of the albums that ere included on this compilation.
Meet the Beatles – As with other early Beatles albums, the sound is very poppy, and full of catchy melodies and choruses. Some of the songs are borrowed from their English release, Please Please Me. A few of the highlights on this CD are I Want to Hold Your Hand, I Saw Her Standing there, which features nice guitar solo, It won’t Be long, and I Wanna Be Your Man. There are a few other tunes you might recognize because they are popular early Beatles songs. This is more of a collection of pop songs than an actual album. Still very enjoyable though. I rate this 3.5/5.
The Beatles Second Album – This album continues the poppy sound that is full of catchy hooks and sing-along choruses. There are a few covers on here, some of them quite good. The highlights are She Loves You, Money, Please Mr. Postman, and Roll Over Beethoven. The latter three are covers. Most of the songs on this album make you want to shake your head, or dance to. Even though, there are still a few songs that seem to drag on a bit, like Devil in Her Heart and I’ll Get You. Definitely an improvement. 3.7/5
Something New – This album seems to be taking a step backwards from the last two. Some of the songs are just not that great and the others don’t hold up well after listened to a lot. Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand, the German version of I want to Hold Your Hand, is good but I view it as filler. There are still good songs though, and my favorites are Things We Said today, I’ll Cry Instead, and Tell Me Why. Okay album. 3.3/5
Beatles ’65 – This is my favorite album included on this compilation. Arguably as good as Help, it shows the band starting to expand out of the pop sound that they had on earlier albums. Most of the songs have acoustic arrangements and some slightly more meaningful lyrics which makes for a slightly Bob Dylan-ish sound. My favorite songs from his album are I’m A Loser which has some very nice rhythm guitar, Baby’s In Black, No Reply, and I Feel Fine, one of the first songs where intentional feedback was used. Good, solid album. 4/5
Well, that’s about it. If you have an interest in the Beatles older music and you don’t own any, this may be just what you’re looking for. At most places, I think the price is about $60.00. If you do the math, that’s less than a dollar per song. One thing that sort of annoys me about this box set is that it is the American versions of albums. I prefer the English releases. But, that was one of the goals of The Capitol Albums Volume One, because before it was released, I don’t think any of the American versions of albums were available on CD. Overall, I rate this box set 3.5/5 because it’s good, but does have its flaws.
Pros:
First time American versions of Beatles albums were released.
Has good material.
Mono and Stereo versions of songs.
Cons:
Packaging
Not everyone enjoys the sound of The Beatles earlier music
Booklet is vague and besides pictures, there isn’t anything good about it.
