I'm an absolute Beatles fanatic, and "Revolver" is viewed as their greatest work - the peak of their mid-sixties flowering. I don't quite buy this, and tend to view it as a slight lull between the twin peaks of "Rubber Soul" and "Sgt Pepper". For all its production innovations and the occasional brilliant song, it has nothing on it which grips me emotionally like "Norweigan Wood", "Girl", or "Run For Your Life" on the former or "With A Little Help From My Friends", "Lucy In The Sky", or "Day In The Life" on the latter.
The album features one brilliant McCartney song and one absolute turd. First the genius : "Eleanor Rigby" is a compelling and acutely-observed commentary on loneliness. The arrangement is masterful, with the strings being used sparely and eloquently; there is no flab and no sugar. This song spawned a thousand other "English social comment" songs. Yet it also reveals tendencies which encapsulate the flaws of this album. It is simply a detached, "here's how it is" commentary. There's no bite or anger here, no analysis or questioning of how or why there are so many people who feel isolated. It would be possible to write a searing indictment of the ways in which society, with its emphasis on "the family", locks people out. Yet nothing like that is attempted here (it would take Lennon on his first solo album to tackle themes like that).
Now for the turd - "Here, There, and Everywhere" is a HORRIBLE and HATEFUL song. It is like drowning in a vat of Tate & Lyle syrup. The words are so weak and simpering ("running my hands through her hair" indeed) and it is sung in such a feeble and spineless way. The chords are bland and cabaret-like. McCartney is a genius who has written loads of brilliant ballads ("Yesterday", "Blackbird", "Long and Winding Road" etc.), so why he had to turn out something so gut-churningly mediocre here really beats me. I think this is the single worst song in my entire CD collection.
Lennon has some really strong stuff on this album, although nothing which quite reaches the peaks of "I'm A Loser", "In My Life", "Strawberry Fields" etc. "I'm Only Sleeping" is a gem, with a typically melancholy lyric and floating, distorted, guitars, plus mysterious and alluring backwards guitar passages. "She Said She Said" is a great Beatles rocker with the classic mid-sixties double-guitar sound. The lyric combines lysergic observation with melancholy self-reflection, picking up Lennon's childhood theme which would be expanded upon greatly in "Strawberry Fields". "And Your Bird Can Sing" is a great-sounding song with an acerbic Lennon vocal, although I don't think it's about anything in particular. "Yellow Submarine" is a very deep song of profound symbolic importance - we can all find a "yellow submarine" in our consciousness somewhere.
And then there is the much-praised "Tomorrow Never Knows". I can admire this song, enjoy the sounds and atmosphere, and appreciate the sonic craftsmanship, but I've never been able to quite get next to it. To me the lyric is generic and non-involving (compare it with the very real spirituality conveyed by Jim McGuinn in "5D") and the song is unexciting melodically. Like quite a lot of the album it's an impressive artefact which doesn't have much substance to it.
And that's about it. Elsewhere there's "Taxman", a dour complaint about taxation which is hard to sympathise with in these days of rampant tax evasion (great guitar solo though), "Love To You" which sounds great but doesn't say anything, and then well-crafted trivia like "Good Day Sunshine", "Dr. Robert", "I Want To Tell You", and "Got To Get You Into My Life".
In all this is an album I tend to be impressed by rather than love (as I do pretty much all the other Beatles albums). For me it has a lot of impressive effects and some great playing, but not all that much which is really gripping or compelling. It might even be the second-worst Beatles studio album (after "Let It Be").
Score : 7/10
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