Rubber Soul spin 1
Rubber Soul will require a few more listens.
I'm a sucker for reading up on the history of these albums. Apparently this album was when they had 4-track recorders instead of 2, so they were able to attempt a reasonable stereo mix. George Martin tried to make a stereo mix that would sound okay in mono, but the art of a stereo mix was in its infancy. Then, when the first CDs were issued in 1987, George Martin was unhappy with the quality of the mix and didn't think it would make a good reissue, so he remixed it in 1987. So there was some love put into these mixes.
The mix is interesting because it's pretty much instruments on one side, vocals on the other, and nothing in the middle. It puts a lot of focus on the vocals, which speaks to something I've been loving about The Beatles in general - they sound very human. It doesn't sound like they put together a song and they're just singing it to reproduce it in recorded form. It sounds like they are expressing the words they are singing, the same way a person expresses ideas to you directly in conversation. I feel like their arrangements aren't just dressing for a song that could be performed in any way - they feel a lot more integral to what the song communicates than that.
At any rate, this album sounds like a bunch of guys perfecting the art of expression through song. The ambition is not in pushing boundaries as it is on Sgt. Pepper and to a lesser extent Revolver - it's just writing good songs. They're better at it once they hit Revolver, but Rubber Soul is still pretty satisfying so far.
I'm a sucker for reading up on the history of these albums. Apparently this album was when they had 4-track recorders instead of 2, so they were able to attempt a reasonable stereo mix. George Martin tried to make a stereo mix that would sound okay in mono, but the art of a stereo mix was in its infancy. Then, when the first CDs were issued in 1987, George Martin was unhappy with the quality of the mix and didn't think it would make a good reissue, so he remixed it in 1987. So there was some love put into these mixes.
The mix is interesting because it's pretty much instruments on one side, vocals on the other, and nothing in the middle. It puts a lot of focus on the vocals, which speaks to something I've been loving about The Beatles in general - they sound very human. It doesn't sound like they put together a song and they're just singing it to reproduce it in recorded form. It sounds like they are expressing the words they are singing, the same way a person expresses ideas to you directly in conversation. I feel like their arrangements aren't just dressing for a song that could be performed in any way - they feel a lot more integral to what the song communicates than that.
At any rate, this album sounds like a bunch of guys perfecting the art of expression through song. The ambition is not in pushing boundaries as it is on Sgt. Pepper and to a lesser extent Revolver - it's just writing good songs. They're better at it once they hit Revolver, but Rubber Soul is still pretty satisfying so far.