On the other hand (i.e. the B-side) "Penny Lane" is a lovely tune that does not suffer from an obscene amount of overdubs. There is plenty of instrumentation, but it's not so overindulgent as to ruin the actual song.
I've been dreading having to review Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band since the beginning of this project. To understand why we'll start with the cover of the album. What a gawdy mess. I feel like I'm gonna slip into a sugar-induced coma. I hope I'm not the only person on Earth who finds this cover ugly.
Then there's the ungodly obnoxious title, which was meant to introduce this as a "concept" album. What it makes me believe is the music within is going to be over-the-top weirdness with outrageous levels of overdubs even more oppresive than what I heard on "Strawberry Fields Forever". Underneath all that will probably be some cool music, but it will be choked to death by The Beatles' attempts to make an artistic statement.
So I said all that having never heard the complete album in my life. Let's see how well my prediction turns out.
You know, I've heard the title track a million times before, but this is the first time I've realized how low in the mix the band and particularly the vocals are. It's kinda strange that the overdubbed audience cheering is clearer than Paul McCartney belting out the lyrics. I guess that might be the point, as early in their career The Beatles' concerts were drowned out by the audience screaming. Even if that is the point I don't understand why they'd ruin a good song by muffling it under audience noise. There's also that moment of canned laughter that I've always hated for being so forced and artificial. And since I'm ranting... It's a bit presumptuous to overdub a screaming audience over a song that you've never played live before, therefore you have no idea how your audience would react to it.
Luckily this issue is addressed for the next track "With A Little Help From My Friends". I'm glad at least they left that track alone, because it works really well without stupid overdubs, such as cheering for, ahem, Billy Shields. The same goes for "Getting Better", a song I've always liked.
"Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" is a fun spacey tune, but I wish John Lennon weren't so whiny. I'm not sure if I've ever really listened to "She's Leaving Home" before and that's a shame, because it's really lovely. I was confused in the middle tracks, especially when trying to decipher "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", or trying to stay awake through "Within You Without You", a heavy repeat of the droning hindi influences of "Love You To" from Revolver. I came back to Earth with "When I'm Sixty-Four". It's never been my favorite Beatles song, but my appreciation for it went up a ton after listening to the weaker tracks on Sgt. Pepper.
The reprise of the title track at the end brings me back to the idea that this is supposed to be a "concept album" of some sort. I'm not sure what the concept was meant to be after all that weirdness. The songs don't really form a cohesive whole beyond being well written and expertly performed, produced, and arranged. On the arrangement of the songs I particularly like how "A Day In The Life" closes the album. The gentle and somewhat dreary lead-in is a perfect finale for an epic album.
Of course I can't normally just praise a song by The Beatles. "A Day In The Life" while something of an epic masterpiece is a song that really annoys me. It's mostly a song I like. The opening, the first couple verses are lovely, even though they are sung by whiny John Lennon. Then there's the breakdown section that builds up with the orchestra to that chopped-off brass stinger that feels awkward in the middle. I wish that wasn't there, because the middle part is equally as good as the first part, and there's an orchestral build up before the final verse that is really smooth. My big problem with both improvised orchestral build up sections is the editing on the last note- it's really sharp and not as clean as it could be. The rest of the song is masterful.
The album also contained a hidden track in the "locked groove", which on an LP is the groove at the center that kept the needle locked in place when the record was done playing but still spinning. Since the locked groove was really short there was really only space for 2 seconds of audio. The Beatles on this album included a snippet that repeated someone annoying person saying, "Never could be any othe wa-" in a nasally voice, and it did cut out before the person finished saying "way."
In the end I wasn't totally off-base guessing this album would be good music wasted by ridiculous production, but I did overshoot how awful it would be. I find about half the songs to be pretentious junk, but the others are good-to-great.
Even with it's over-the-top orchestration I love "All You Need Is Love", but the cover for the single may contain the ugliest of the ugly pictures of The Beatles. "Baby You're A Rich Man" is nothing special.
I guess I was mostly wrong about Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. I wound up kinda liking it. One thing I forgot to mention was how the sound quality was excellent on all of these recordings, dare I say practically perfect. That's impressive when you consider how much editing all these songs required to piece the performances together. 3 stars.
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