Styles: Vocal Pop
Year: 2017
Time: 48:03
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Size: 112,0 MB
Art: Front
(5:46) 1. Come Together
(3:10) 2. Something
(3:01) 3. Maxwell's Silver Hammer
(3:32) 4. Oh! Darling
(2:59) 5. Octopus's Garden
(7:06) 6. I Want You (She's so Heavy)
(2:55) 7. Here Comes the Sun
(2:54) 8. Because
(4:07) 9. You Never Give Me Your Money
(2:28) 10. Sun King
(1:04) 11. Mean Mr. Mustard
(1:20) 12. Polythene Pam
(1:53) 13. She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
(1:31) 14. Golden Slumbers
(1:37) 15. Carry That Weight
(2:11) 16. The End
(0:21) 17. Her Majesty
Are you excited about a new, high quality Beatles tribute album? You will probably like Rock4's Abbey Road. Are you indifferent to The Beatles yet open to a covers album if it's done well? You also will probably like this Abbey Road. But if you don't like songs by The Beatles, I'm not sure this release is compelling enough to change your mind.
For this review to make sense, you should know that I am mostly a category two person with a splash of category three, enough so that I didn't immediately realize this is a track-for-track cover of The Beatles' last four-man studio album. And I didn't really have time to catch up to the rest of the classic rock world by learning the original record inside and out, so you'll have to take my face value impressions at face value.
The opening track, Come Together, is a contender for world's best rock song, is definitely my favorite Beatles song, and is also the one track that gets an obviously less-than-conventional cover. Rock4 chose to transform it into an Enigma-style mashup with techno Gregorian chant. This was a mistake. I, personally, am exactly the target audience for a cappella techno-fied Gregorian chant. I do not want it mixed in with The Beatles. Nor do I want one of the few Beatles songs I actively like to be anything other than the rocker it is.
Further down the road (heh) things seem to straighten out, at least as much as The Beatles intended. Something is straight up and very nice for what it is. Because, an a cappella staple going back to The Nylons, does what it says on the tin and the two Sun songs are arranged with pleasing echos. Octopus's Garden, in addition to being a terrible song, is also the weirdest listen because of the way Rock4 sings the word "garden". It's just a smidge too Germanic (sorry, I know you're Dutch but there it is) to get past my ears. Otherwise, the English is just as good as the singing, which is to say really quite nice overall.
Moving on, I really like the unisons on Carry That Weight. Probably my favorite song on this disc, and one of the most charismatic. I also enjoy the duo of Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam Rock4 keeps it light and gives the latter a heavy dose of Sympathy For the Devil-style "whoo-whoo"s. I am not going to wade into The Beatles vs. Stones abyss, but a few things stand out too much to avoid.
All this is to say that Abbey Road is an ambitious project that makes good on its promise. If that appeals to you, you'll have a good time.https://www.rarb.org/reviews/albums/1682-abbey-road/
Abbey Road
