All You Need is "Love"

I'd like to talk about a topic that's near and dear to my heart. It's been a passion of mine since about third grade, and many people know me in terms of my near-obsession with this topic.

Of course, I'm talking about the Beatles. I just ripped the new "Love" CD from my roommate (and am listening to it while typing this post). For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's basically a remix of Beatles songs done by producer George Martin and his son Giles for the Cirque du Soleil show.

Now I already know there are some Beatles purists out there who will no doubt discard this album as an abomination without actually listening to it. To them, I say, give it a chance.

Upon first listening, I must say that there are some really cool things to it. The songs are at their best when they transition almost seamlessly from one song to another. There are also other songs, such as "I Am the Walrus," where certain elements of the original sound are highlighted more than other. The strings in this song really come out, and they make you stop and think, "I never really heard those before in the original." Other songs use bits and pieces of other songs to include in the background music.

All in all, it ends up as a rethinking of how the songs go, and true Beatles aficionados will no doubt spend their time trying to pluck out each foreign sound and determine where it originally came from. It's kind of a fun mental test.

However, there are some songs where it's hard to determine what's different. In those songs, I don't think the remixing goes far enough. And that's probably the biggest flaw of this album.

Overall, though, I think most Beatles fans will be pleased. Anything that has "new" and "Beatles" in the same sentence will always be welcome to me. Heck, I even liked the DJ Danger Mouse mash-up of Beatles' "White Album" songs with Jay-Z's "Black Album," dubbed "The Grey Album." But I think the sounds in "Love" are more recognizable than in "The Grey Album." There are a lot of "I can't believe they did that" moments in this CD.