Revolver (1966)
14 tracks, 35 minutes
Spotify • iTunes
We’re on a great run of albums that aren’t just Good but some of the best, and Revolver is certainly keeping that ball up in the air.
When I was little, I was completely obsessed with the Beatles. When I was in Year Two or Three, The Beatles were my ‘thing’. And then I sort of forgot about them. Obviously I knew they were great, and still listened to them occasionally, but it was more taken as read rather than felt. But then about nine years ago, I put Revolver on and it blew my mind all over again. Cue listening to it again and again over the period of a few weeks, and my love for the Beatles fully rekindled.
Every track is perfect in context of the album. Even the obligatory drippy love song (‘Here, There and Everywhere’) and children’s offering (‘Yellow Submarine’) add, rather than subtract, to the album’s overall quality. There are so many moments of out genius on Revolver that it’s easy to forget them. The album has one of the best Beatles guitar solos in ‘Taxman;’ the desperately sad ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ performed only by a double string quartet and voices; George’s most successful Indian experiment in ‘Love You To,’ and one of the group’s earliest forays into musique concrète in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’…and it was released just three years after their strummy-wummy debut. How a group can progress so far in such a short amount of time is nothing short of madness.
(Revolver also gets bonus points for one of the best album names ever, clever in the same way as The Buzzcock’s Spiral Scratch EP.)
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