Love & Mercy (Bill Pohlad, 2015)

[hearthesilence]

"A Day in the Life" is also the greatest track ever made by the Beatles. Alone it's fantastic but it's even greater as the album closer - Sgt. Pepper builds wonderfully towards it, and the track pretty much dissolves the preceding half hour of whimsical psychedelia into a dark and magnificent finale.

I'm not that familiar with Easter Everywhere yet, I've only heard it a few times - it's very good, but I could appreciate it more with time!

And I'm not a fan of "Blue Jay Way" - too diffuse for me, and I love George. But it's not one of his best moments.

"Fool on the Hill" gets points for trying, but Paul does this once in a while, where he tries to write a song with real depth but comes up with something that sounds more innocuous than meaningful. ("Another Day" comes to mind.) You can hear what he's going for, but it's barely there, either that or the song just doesn't have a lot to say. If the recording/production itself was more compelling, I might like it.

[hearthesilence]

Oh, and I did include The Who Sell Out! It took a while to warm to me as an album though - my initial impressions were that it got lost after "I Can See for Miles," meandering a bit, even seeming like the band just got bored with the concept, but the 1995 reissue turned things around but unearthing a boatload of strong material, all done in the spirit of the original concept as well. They don't feel like bonuses, they feel like the completion of the whole idea.

[Drucker]

but Paul does this once in a while, where he tries to write a song with real depth but comes up with something that sounds more innocuous than meaningful. ("Another Day" comes to mind.) You can hear what he's going for, but it's barely there, either that or the song just doesn't have a lot to say. If the recording/production itself was more compelling, I might like it.

Exactly how I feel about "Eleanor Rigby."

[hearthesilence]

Man, I love that track - the strings alone are great but the verses probably say a lot more than even Paul intended.

[MoonlitKnight]

I think Sgt. Pepper has gone from overrated to underrated now. It was definitely a major, important event, which understandably inflated its reputation. Not their best album or the best album of 1967, but still a great album. It definitely hurt that the two best tracks from those sessions were removed under pressure to release a record (a double A-side single) after a long period of silence, and even George Martin concedes that was a mistake. But even if the songs on the album aren't consistent, the production certainly is, and honestly, a surprising number of great albums from the '60s have a handful of so-so tracks. They don't sink their respective albums because it's how they work together that's important, not how the individual pieces work on their own.

I definitely agree omitting "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" from the album was a major blow to it. My general appraisal of Sgt. Pepper is, 'the world's most impeccable production can't mask the core fact that this definitely wasn't the best batch of songs with which the group ever came up.'

A few more great '67 albums you didn't mention:
The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Axis: Bold As Love
The Doors: The Doors and Strange Days
The Rolling Stones: Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request (though I know quite a few will disagree with me on the latter 8-[ )
The Byrds: Younger Than Yesterday
Love: Da Capo
The Pretty Things: Emotions
Jefferson Airplane: After Bathing at Baxter's
Procol Harum: Procol Harum

Disappointing to hear Smile is once again reduced to footnote status in this film.

[mfunk9786]

It's not - it's just that the troubled production of it is the last thing in that timeline that's really addressed. There's some cool reproductions of footage of the recording of that album, but it doesn't get nearly as in depth with the sessions as it does with Pet Sounds. It suits the story being told, though I sort of wish the film didn't give off the impression that Wilson lost it entirely during the recording of SMiLE and didn't record any music for decades - Smiley Smile and Surf's Up are two of the best albums ever recorded, even if Wilson could only muster partial involvement at times, and Smiley Smile had an unfair reputation for a long time as being some bastardized incomplete version of SMiLE, which is only true in theory and not in evaluation of quality.

[hearthesilence]

Wild Honey is the great post-Smile Beach Boys album imho. And Between the Buttons and Younger Than Yesterday are definitely two favorites that I missed.

[MoonlitKnight]

It's not - it's just that the troubled production of it is the last thing in that timeline that's really addressed. There's some cool reproductions of footage of the recording of that album, but it doesn't get nearly as in depth with the sessions as it does with Pet Sounds. It suits the story being told, though I sort of wish the film didn't give off the impression that Wilson lost it entirely during the recording of SMiLE and didn't record any music for decades - Smiley Smile and Surf's Up are two of the best albums ever recorded, even if Wilson could only muster partial involvement at times, and Smiley Smile had an unfair reputation for a long time as being some bastardized incomplete version of SMiLE, which is only true in theory and not in evaluation of quality.

The one good thing, I suppose, that came out of Brian's breakdown is that it made the other band members step up and pick up the creative slack. Dennis also turned out to be a very good songwriter in his own right... though a fair amount of his songs ended up in the vaults, or in his solo work. It's definitely a shame their albums from Smiley Smile through Holland are still largely ignored by all but the group's biggest fans. #-o

[aox]

Their Satanic Majesties Request (though I know quite a few will disagree with me on the latter 8-[ )

I've actually been revisiting this album over the past few years, and I think it is unfairly maligned. I get the criticism it receives, but there are some fantastic tracks/ideas on it, and specifically, I think "She's a Rainbow" is one of the Stones' best tracks.

SMiLE would have been a welcome addition to what I consider one of the best years of modern music (as listed above). Had Brian's ideas been accepted and SMiLE a success, I can't help but wonder how different the band's musical history would have been.

Not that it matters, and I realize it is June, but does this film IYO have any Oscar momentum?

[hearthesilence]

Still not a fan of that album, but it's not as bad as it was made out to be. I think its reputation has gotten a lot better in the past decade or so - Bottle Rocket (which I didn't even see until 2004) even made me take notice of "2000 Man" for the first time. Half the time it's quite good but much of it still feels like wankery to me.

[Drucker]

Satanic Majesties is an okay album, but this line of defense always grates on me. Having a great song or two does not a fantastic album make, especially when compared to the 6 albums that pre/post-date it!

[MoonlitKnight]

A few more gems we forgot:
Cream: Disraeli Gears
The Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed
Traffic: Mr. Fantasy

Satanic Majesties is an okay album, but this line of defense always grates on me. Having a great song or two does not a fantastic album make, especially when compared to the 6 albums that pre/post-date it!

Personally, its mostly messy psychedelia is what endears me to it so much; like a second-tier Terry Gilliam film. I can still trip out to "Gomper" almost as equally as, say, "Third Stone from the Sun." 8-[ And bonus for including Bill Wyman's only lead vocal with the group (one of only 2 songs he wrote that the group ever recorded, actually).

Not that it matters, and I realize it is June, but does this film IYO have any Oscar momentum?

I'm gonna guess no... particularly since my local theater has already significantly scaled back the number of screenings in just its second week.

[D50]

I caught the first showing of the day (11:20 am) on release day, and it was almost half full. During the beginning of the credits, no one got up for several minutes. At the very end there is an audio bonus.

[oh yeah]

I'm glad that the reaction to this is so positive. I have to admit I kind of wrote it off after the rather saccharine-seeming trailer where Dano transforms to Cusack and their non-resemblance is startling. Sounds interesting now, though.

I have a mixed relationship to the Beach Boys, in that I find their best songs some of the finest I've heard but even those I can only listen to every so often as there's just some intangible thing about Brian's voice that can really irritate me if I'm not in a receptive mood for it. Hard to explain. But I was watching Mad Men recently and was reminded of the poignancy of I Just Wasn't Made For These Times when it appeared during Roger's acid trip (lovely sequence and episode).

As far as off-topic Beatles stuff:
Everyone who hasn't really needs to read Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald. I've never encountered such a brilliant piece of music criticism, period, not just about the Beatles. It's a song-by-song dissection on the micro level and an exhaustive cultural/musical analysis of "the sixties" on the macro level. People's criticism of it tends to just be that MacDonald is too harsh on their favorite songs, but I welcome his honesty and discerning ear, even when I don't personally agree -- I'm tired of fanboy-ish sycophants. Let's face it, the Beatles wrote some garbage even in their best period (the noxiously empty Lady Madonna is my personal least favorite of all their singles, at the very least; I have a hatred for it that burns brighter than a thousand suns). Though, often the garbage isn't at all what most people think it is -- e.g. I absolutely adore Revolution 9 and think it adds a lot to the already foreboding, eerie atmosphere of the White Album; its placement near the end of the record there, before the innocence of Good Night, is genius. Speaking of that album, Long Long Long may just be the most unfairly overlooked Beatles song of all. What a beautiful track.

I would say Sgt. Pepper is probably my favorite Beatles album, even though Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite is kind of dreadful. It's partly nostalgia, 'cause it was the first music of theirs I heard at age 13, but I also just find the album very moving and very sonically dense -- even the less-praised tracks like Lovely Rita I adore and find gorgeous in every way. I think that every Beatles album has at least one or two tracks that are mediocre/bad/not as great as the rest; Abbey Road comes closest to perfection in this respect, but it also lacks some of the emotional punch of Pepper, and when taken out of sequence (or even as is) Mean Mr. Mustard or Polythene Pam aren't exactly classic songs, really. Magical Mystery Tour is much less substantive on the whole than any of their other post-Rubber Soul LPs bar Let It Be; but it's such a fun album, and such a well-produced one, and the good songs are really damn good, so it's not too big a problem.

The most overpraised Beatles album is probably Help! -- sure, half of it is superb and their best material up to that point, but the other half is some of the most incredibly banal filler the band ever put to tape.

[hearthesilence]

I actually think Greil Marcus has done the best critical writing of the Beatles' music, but it gets overshadowed by the fact that he hasn't written any books focusing on them. Most of it comes in bits and pieces, like the first paragraph in this Real Life Top Ten column that's an excellent take on "A Day in the Life." Occasionally he contributes less ambitious articles for a mainstream audience, like this one on George Harrison's important role in the group. By far his longest and best piece is the chapter he did on them for Rolling Stone's long out-of-print illustrated rock encyclopedia.

[Drucker]

The other day on twitter, I noticed someone going off about how the Beach Boys>Beatles, which is fine, but he also had a loathing of Sgt. Pepper. This is a sentiment a few of my friends share, calling it "carnival music." I have no idea when the idea took root that Sgt. Pepper isn't great, but that's just beyond me. The songs are beautiful, lovely, and the album flows possibly better than their other albums. For me, the Beatles albums with no weak songs are: A Hard Day's Night, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, and White Album (which, in this case, songs like "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" fit for me because of the eclecticness of the album as a whole.)

[hearthesilence]

The Beach Boys vs. Beatles mentality of comparing both bands to inflate one while knocking down the other is such bullshit, it's basically reducing pop music/art into a moronic sports competition. Regardless, it became fashionable to knock down both Pepper and SMiLE because of the tremendous mythology around both. Pepper keeps getting pushed as the greatest album of all-time by what's still by far the most widely read "rock" publication in the world, even though most people - Beatle fans, rock fans, rock critics, you name it - don't even consider it the Beatles' best album. SMiLE has been criticized for the praise it got when most people who didn't spend hours poring through books on those sessions had no idea what the finished product would've sounded like (or rather, how it would've been condensed, arranged and sequenced out of the mountain of bootlegs out there). I remember Jimmy Guterman claiming it was like giving an A to a term paper assignment when the student turned in a pile of notes.

Rock criticism has a tendency towards polarization and exaggeration that often takes it too far in either direction. It's either a towering masterpiece or a pile of garbage.

[mfunk9786]

Also, taking a stance against one of these bands (particularly The Beatles) is rarely backed up with much aside from a "look at me" attitude. I'm not saying everyone must love these sacred cows, just that you should probably have some sort of explanation as to why you don't if you go around exclaiming it all the time.

[oh yeah]

I actually think Greil Marcus has done the best critical writing of the Beatles' music, but it gets overshadowed by the fact that he hasn't written any books focusing on them. Most of it comes in bits and pieces, like the first paragraph in this Real Life Top Ten column that's an excellent take on "A Day in the Life." Occasionally he contributes less ambitious articles for a mainstream audience, like this one on George Harrison's important role in the group. By far his longest and best piece is the chapter he did on them for Rolling Stone's long out-of-print illustrated rock encyclopedia.

Thanks for linking these; I like a lot of Marcus's writing, particularly the essays on Lynch and Fire Walk With Me, and this seems promising too so far.

I just think MacDonald's book is such a singular achievement, and I love the academic-yet-poetic way he writes. (It's quite similar to the style of Charles Shaar Murray in Crosstown Traffic: surely the finest book on the actual music of Jimi Hendrix). He also did a beautiful elegy for Nick Drake which can be found here, and a relatively brief but astonishingly insightful examination of Dylan -- both found in The People's Music, a great collection of essays published just before MacDonald's 2003 suicide -- which honestly rendered the 300 or 400+ page Dylan bio I own all but useless.

[MoonlitKnight]

Long Long Long may just be the most unfairly overlooked Beatles song of all. What a beautiful track.

For me that's their second most criminally underrated track, after another George song: "It's All Too Much."

[Drucker]

A third nominee: "Don't Bother Me"

[mfunk9786]

Those are interesting choices, especially because typically when you hear people talk about what Beatles songs are underrated, they bring up something like "Hey Bulldog," which at this point has become one of the most overrated Beatles songs because of its constant inclusion in those discussions when in fact it isn't very good at all.

[Drucker]

Weird. If I have any pulse on what Beatles-era is over/under-rated at this point in time, I still think the early stuff is unfairly maligned. A Hard Day's Night is perfect to me, and Help! and Beatles for Sale have some beautifully dark songs ("I Don't Want to Spoil The Party", "You Like Me Too Much", "No Reply", "I'm A Loser"). My problem with those two albums would be relatively weak covers and the singles from that era ("Ticket To Ride", "Eight Days A Week") are weak to me as well.

[domino harvey]

Those are interesting choices, especially because typically when you hear people talk about what Beatles songs are underrated, they bring up something like "Hey Bulldog," which at this point has become one of the most overrated Beatles songs because of its constant inclusion in those discussions when in fact it isn't very good at all.

I think "I Dig a Pony" is still the "hip" default answer as of late

[Newsnayr]

I've always been a big fan of Savoy Truffle, though it might be because I play saxophone. As for The Beach Boys, I think Let Him Run Wild is severely underrated.