War Child’s newest compilation – benefiting children affected by war – is structured around a premise that legendary artists pick modern day artists to cover their classics: Beck does a rousing, bluesy rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”, Lily Allen does a soft and ironically sweet cover of The Clash’s “Paper Planes”-sampled “Straight to Hell”,  Hot Chip dance-pops up Joy Division’s “Transmission, and TV on the Radio manages to make the first good cover of Bowie’s “Heroes” that this reviewer has ever heard; despite a few low points, (The Kinks clearly picked The Kooks to cover “Victoria” because of the similar names, and the results are quite boring, and Peaches’ can’t hold a candle to the badassness of Iggy Pop’s “Search and Destroy”) the whole thing paints a more promising portrait of the state of popular music then you’re likely to get from most sources and besides, once again, it’s all for a good cause so you should buy it anyway.

8.3 / 10

Astralwerks
February 24, 2009

Calling Paul McCartney’s latest album “experimental” is too easy…it’s also inaccurate, as a good chunk of the disc is as mainstream/pop-oriented as anything Sir Paul does under his own name – but that doesn’t take anything away from the superior musicianship of the album that hasn’t shown up in his work in a number of years – this could be his most innovative and diverse output since “The White Album” and it shows from the opening single “Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight” (which is probably the truest experimental music here) to the lazy guitar and blues-infused vocals of “Two Magpies” and the stompalong, singalong gospel-twinged fun of “Light from Your Lighthouse”.

Grade: 3.2 / 5

November 25, 2008
ATO Records

The Beatles (“The White Album”)

November 22, 1968
Apple
Rating: 5 / 5

The Music Rag One Sentence Review: The perfect answer to the over-the-top near-ridiculous-at-times-ness of Sgt. Pepper’s, no other album covers as much ground as the Fab Four’s eponymous 1968 breakthrough, not just covering every genre from rock (“Birthday”) to music hall (“Honey Pie”), campy sing-alongs (“The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”) to proto-metal (“Helter Skelter”) but covering every mood imaginable as well, from social activism (“Revolution”) to utter nonsense (“I’m So Tired”), simple devotion (“I WIll”) to unbridled lust (“Why Don’t We Do It In The Road”); that The Beatles manages to coalesce into a perfect blend of, well, everything, is a small miracle considering that the group was being actively torn apart during its creation.

A real mockery: To say that the album draws on several genres and influences is perhaps only a half truth – the album is full of mockery that is, for the most playful (“Back In The USSR”, “Honey Pie”) but at times contains searing sarcasm (“Happiness Is A Warm Gun”, “Sexy Sadie”).

Waste of space: Avant garde blowhards will claim “Revolution 9″ is a masterpiece, but it’s little more than a self-indulgent waste of 9 minutes that is only interesting when listening to it for clues that Paul is dead.

It could have been even better: As we’ve heard from the Anthology series, songs left off The Beatles include a large chunk of the second half of Abbey Road, and the original demo of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is such a spine-tinglingly, haunting beautiful dirge that it is downright scary to think what it might have been like if the boys had decided to add a third disc to the package.

The Beatles – Abbey Road

September 26, 1969
Apple/Parlophone/EMI
Rating: 5 / 5

The Music Rag One Sentence Review: Abbey Road is the last album that The Beatles recorded and therefore serves as their grand farewell, and what a farewell it is: more rock-focused then some of their previous work but filled with incredible songwriting and vocals (more three part harmonies than any other Beatles album), this is when they hit their absolute peak as musicians.

Best moments: The opener “Come Together” is deservedly classic. “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” represent George Harrison’s maturation as a songwriter and the best stuff he ever wrote with The Beatles. The album ends with the famous “medley”, a series of short songs strung together into an appropriately powerful finale, climaxing with a series of guitar solos and the great, immortal words “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

The Cover: Abbey Road‘s cover is one of The Beatles’ most famous, rivaled only by the Sgt. Pepper’s cover, and it’s been referenced endlessly in pop culture. It was a major part of the “Paul is Dead” hoax: It’s said that the cover portrays McCartney’s funeral procession, with John representing the clergy, Ringo representing the undertaker, and George representing the gravedigger. If you’d like to – for whatever reason – monitor the famous zebra crosswalk any time of the day, check out the Abbey Road webcam and make fun of all the tourists taking pictures as they walk across it. (And pretend you wouldn’t do the same.)