Tracks: Hard Day’s Night // I Should Have Known Better // If I Fell // I’m Happy Just to Dance With You // And I Love Her // Tell Me Why // Can’t Buy Me Love // Any Time At All // I’ll Cry Instead // Things We Said Today // You Can’t Do That // I’ll Be Back

Review:

Another year, another Beatles album. This one was the soundtrack to a hit movie! Isn’t that exciting? It isn’t that exciting? Well, I bet that in 1963 the whole thing was pretty damned exciting. In any case I'm going through a "rock" phase at the moment, so if I was ever going to generous to early Beatles then now is the time.

The Beatles have advanced a lot since the last album, even if only in terms of song-writing focus. Meet the Beatles was a bad-to-mediocre affair with a couple of stand-outs. A Hard Day’s Night is a mediocre-to-good album with a few let-downs. It’s all a trade-off, really. The songs are still basic early 60s pop-rock, but that’s not such a bad thing given that the Beatles helped to define the style of the times. And of course the two big singles, the skiffly “Can’t Buy Me Love” and lust-draped title track, are both glorious and show an obvious sort of progression. But then you have the other tracks.

Well, if nothing else they do show variety. You have “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You” and “I’ll Be Back”, two little Shadows-styled numbers the former of which is vastly more enjoyable than the latter, and “Any Time At All”, which is also reminiscent of the Shadows but which somehow manages to both rock hard and conjure visions of Petula Clark. You have “Tell Me Why”, a deliberately goofy Everly Brothers knock-off by way of a game show theme, complete with backing vocals by the rest of the Beatles pretending to be ladies. “If I Fell” is a tepid ballad that sounds like Prudence & Patience cast-off, but much more successful is “And I Love Her” – which has stupid lyrics, but is otherwise a very finely done sort of Country & Western ballad married to a bongo-styled beat and some very nice minor riffs on the chorus. And it’s quite sweet, which is always nice. It reminds me of the ballads of early Zeppelin. And it had woodblocks, of all things! Another neat song is “I Should Have Known Better”, which sounds quite Motown, but which boasts a prominent bluesy harmonica and a decidedly “rock” chorus. And I’ll Cry Instead” is ok too, if only because I have a soft spot for skiffle. Decidedly not OK is “You Can’t Do That”, which boasts an interesting backing track but is let down by utterly abysmal vocals by John Lennon. And I mean truly, unbearably awful. I wonder why they even put this on the album – I mean, there were already 11 songs! Did they really need another one?

It’s this sort of “throw everything at a wall and see what sticks” attitude that seems to be undoing the Beatles at this stage. If this album had ended with “Can’t Buy Me Love” then it’d be a very strong, interesting set of songs. Heck, if the track order had been rearranged a bit so that it didn’t trail of so suddenly, that might have helped too. I suppose this is what happens when you record a side’s worth of A material that made the film, and then decide to pad side 2 with all the songs that weren’t good enough to be in the movie. It’s especially problematic given that the first, good, half is not especially brilliant to begin with. Then again, this can be countered by the fact that, for the first time, the album features only songs written by Lennon and McCartney. The singer-songwriter era is really kicking into gear now, which is a pretty exciting development for all concerned.

So, in the end an important artistic and commercial development on the part of the Beatles, and a pleasant listen for anyone with a fondness for early 60s pop-rock. But that's about it.

7/10

Download: The Beatles - And I Love Her MP3