#55 Rubber Soul by The Beatles

An interesting thing about reviewing an artist multiple times is that you begin to take on the same role as an auntie. Every now and then you get a glimpse of this artist at irregular intervals, of about a year or so, and every time that you see them you begin to notice the changes that they have gone through. For some artists, such as Bob Dylan, this process has been gradual for the first album of his was already exactly what I expected of him, this was not the case for The Beatles. While I did enjoy With The Beatles there was a sense of playing it safe and a lot of the material was derivative. This changed in A Hard Day’s Night where there really was a profound shift in the music that they were making. I guess that what I am trying to say here is that in developmental terms it appears that The Beatles are similar to a border collie where Rubber Soul is their puberty.

Rubber Soul is the first time that over the course of a whole album you can identify it as purely a Beatles album. This was not made to gain a foothold like With The Beatles as they had gained the world by storm with their previous releases. This wasn’t a purely commercial venture like A Hard Day’s Night as there was no film to accompany. What we have here ladies and gentlemen is the true creative emancipation of the Beatles, like I mentioned in my last review of their material. This is, as I previously coined, puberty for The Beatles as finally they resemble the act that we all know they will turn into.

Also as I go along the ratio of songs I know to total songs on the album keep increasing. This is always a good thing as in the end for a song to be still doing the founds over forty years later they must have been doing something right. So when this album began with Drive My Car which is such an irritable scrap of pop that you really do find yourself drawn into the world of distorted images and contemporarily ground-breaking music.

On the whole this is a very good album, wow I appear to be on a bit of a streak here, and it is very well put together. Little treats like the sitars in Norwegian Wood and the dark stalker-like song Run For Your Life are dotted so liberally that you almost brush over the two lesser tracks of the bundle, Michelle and Wait. But those tracks are there, and although this is a Beatles album I have to be as unforgiving as I was to A Christmas Gift For You.

While there are a multitude of people at my age, and younger, who still look down their noses at The Beatles and albums such as Rubber Soul as being old and therefore being of no relevance to their life. You know who I mean, the people that sit in their bedrooms pawing over posters of The Jonas Brothers or The Arctic Monkeys declaring that they know better. Well, after listening to Rubber Soul the final remnants of my Beatles-related demons have been washed away and I can actually recognise them for what they were. A pioneering act who themselves had to evolve, and take a few wrong turns in songs like Wait, before they made their magnum opus.

While it is true that in many ways The Beatles had it easier, as nowadays there is such a melee of artists that you do need to make something new, this act never became complacent in their towering popularity and strived so that they never really wore the same guise twice. As such I await their next album, Revolver, with baited breath.

8.5/10

Fab Four:
Drive My Car
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
I’m Looking Through You
Run For Your Life