The Bea­t­les “White Album” (Stereo Remaster)

So, I couldn’t wait. Was at the store two days ago and picked up the White Album remas­ter. Very nice pack­ag­ing. They dupli­cated the poster that used to come in the orig­i­nal LP, and included a pretty cool book that didn’t tell me any­thing new about the record­ings but had some very high qual­ity pho­tos I had never seen before and of course all of the lyrics.

But the real antic­i­pa­tion was, how does this sound? I popped it into the car CD player and the screech­ing air­plane that intro’s Back In The USSR came on. Hmmm. Then Dear Pru­dence. OK. It sounded good but not sure if it was any kind of improve­ment. I was expect­ing the big emo­tional whoosh I got when I heard the remixed Yel­low Sub­ma­rine or insane mashup of Love.

But of course that is not what this is. This is Apple tak­ing advan­tage of mod­ern day tech­nol­ogy to put the mas­ter mixes onto CD prop­erly, so they sound fresh and vibrant. You shouldn’t really hear new gui­tar parts not on the orig­i­nal albums or any­thing like that. It should just sound bet­ter in gen­eral. But I wasn’t sure I was hear­ing any­thing all that dif­fer­ent sonically.

But then some­thing hap­pened. While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps came on and all of a sud­den it sounded EPIC. The piano intro was bit­ing, Clapton’s solos were right there in my face and it sounded like Har­ri­son was play­ing acoustic next to me in the pas­sen­ger seat.

And it went on — The horn and string parts in Martha My Dear, the bell in Everybody’s Got Some­thing to Hide… They were crisp, clear and loud. And the White Album’s quiet songs always seemed to be sort of muf­fled to my ears. But now, songs like Julia, I Will, Black­bird, Long Long Long and Mother Nature’s Son sound like they were pulled off of Revolver or Rub­ber Soul, which I always felt sounded crisper.

In fact the bird sounds in Black­bird were so clear and present that they were almost dis­tract­ing, as was the bell in Mon­key. And Yoko’s war­bling “Hey Bun­garow Birwl” was also more audi­ble (a good thing?).

McCart­ney said in a state­ment that these CDs are now as close to what it sounded like being there when the songs were recorded and I believe him.

There are ‘mak­ing of’ videos on each new CD but I haven’t watched the White Album one yet.

I am actu­ally going to kick on Rev­o­lu­tion 9 and get into the groove (not). But I bet Good Night sounds excellent!

Not sure if I will even­tu­ally replace my whole Bea­t­les col­lec­tion with these but if the White Album is any indi­ca­tion, I just might.

Review: by Isorski | Isorski’s Mus­ings
12 Sep­tem­ber 2009