Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 4/5 Released: November 21, 2006 Reviewer: David Coats |
Produced by George Martin and his son, Giles, Love is a collection of Beatles classics compiled and remixed for use as a soundtrack for Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas show of the same name. The idea was to tastefully and artfully combine elements of different songs to create new versions (the only new music recorded for the project was a symphonic accompaniment for ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’), and some of the transformations are quite dramatic.
For instance, opener ‘Because’ is now performed a capella, accompanied only by bird calls, a stunning atmosphere that evokes images of, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…†This then gives way to the distinctive opening chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ which flows into Ringo’s drum solo from ‘The End,’ mixed into a vibrant rendition of ‘Get Back.’ The track listing largely ignores the band’s early work, focusing instead on the band’s Rubber Soul-onwards era, hardly a surprise, as those songs had more artistic potential for a project such as this.
In advance of Love’s release, perhaps the major criticism levied against it was that it was sacrilegious to tamper with the original versions of songs as legendary as these, but while some songs are noticeably different, one needs to be thoroughly familiar with the originals to spot many of the changes (the seamless nature of these arrangements in itself is probably a credit to the Martins). That is, the fans likely to oppose this concept the most on principle are also the ones it’s most designed to reward. In the end, Love is better suited to either casual fans or outright newcomers (The Beatles for a new generation, for lack of a better way of putting it), as these dynamic recordings and arrangements showcase the songs in a way that proves not only what a fantastic band The Beatles were, but remain.
