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Final Impressions

I suppose I should finish up on the impressions for the Beatles remasters. I’m just going to do it all briefly. (I don’t think I’ll be doing Past Masters, but let’s just say that that’s excellent.)

We start, of course, with that most famous of albums. Sgt. Pepper’s clearly benefits from the remaster. I think both versions sound fine though I’m partial to the Mono version. What’s also interesting is the use of different tracks, which is most noticeable on this album than others, I think. Good Morning Good Morning proceeds with different effects, at different pitches and also different tempos when you compare the Stereo and Mono versions.

All that said, my opinion is that the Stereo edition sounds a fair bit closer to a modern recording, and to that end, I actually prefer the Stereo version of A Day In The Life.

The same things could be said about Magical Mystery Tour, except that I want to add that this tends to be one of the most underrated albums in the Beatles catalogue, and certainly the remasters are a good excuse to dive into it with great attention. The clarity here is fairly amazing, though I would say that the Mono version sounds the richer perhaps because of its balance; the Stereo version appears to be somewhat “over-remastered”, if you catch my drift. That’s not as serious as it might sound, but the impression definitely lingered.

The White Album is spectacular in the remaster. Surely the difference isn’t night and day, but it’s definitely a noticeable cleaning-up. I prefer the Stereo one, primarily because the Mono sounds slightly as if it were being played through a wall. While the same could be said about many of the remasters, the Stereo version here doesn’t seem to suffer so much from the same sharpness/thinness/lack-of-warmth that the respective versions of the other albums seem to. It sounds pretty much like a contemporary album, actually.

To me, the biggest improvements on Yellow Submarine are to be found on the orchestral tracks. Admittedly, though, Hey Bulldog has a lot more punch, and that’s definitely welcome. No Mono version, of course.

On the other hand, the improvements for Let It Be are probably the least noticeable for me. It might in part have to do with the release of Let It Be… Naked all those years ago. I’m not sure.

Abbey Road sounds fantastic. That may be bias on my part because it is after all my favourite Beatles album. It might also have to do with the complexity of the arrangements and instrumentation (arguably anyway, compared to maybe Let It Be). Or it might have to do with how this is after all the most recent of the Beatles albums and is more in line with modern recording techniques. It sounds rich, full, and is basically the perfect way to end your Beatles listening marathon.

Admittedly, I cheated and listened to Abbey Road first, and when I got to The End, I said to myself, “This is the reason they did these remasters.” I’d never noticed the bass before on that, but it was so outstanding in the remaster and was compelling enough to give the track new life. And that’s precisely the reason these remasters are so important. The Beatles have always been compelling and vital, but these remasters enriches the experience, restores voices you didn’t know the lads possessed. The remasters preserve the Beatles at their finest by allowing the enormous character of their music to transcend the technological limits of their time.

Most of all, the remasters remind us that the Beatles catalogue has been with us for some four decades before this immense project, and that it continues to stay relevant, continues to stay alive, is a testament that technicalities in art are simply technicalities. There is permanence in this music because the boys had such enormous hearts, and, well, those were really some damn good songs.

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© 2010 a modest odyssey.