Word: albums
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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BILLY BUDD (London: 3 LPs). Benjamin Britten's music is filled with a mystic intensity that illuminates rather than beclouds the libretto, which was beautifully crafted by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier from Melville's tale of an innocent's execution. The album has been meticulously produced with a cast that includes Peter Glossop as Billy and Peter Pears as Captain Vere: Britten himself conducts...
...months later, I was back in Cambridge, and another reading period mania was settling in. It was just too bleak out to go anywhere, and it was one of those terrible periods when you already knew the last Beatles album by heart, and you knew there wouldn't be another one for months, and you had been to Tommy's so often that it only made things worse...
When musicologists of the future start rummaging through the LP artifacts of the '60s, they will be able to discern several distinct phases in the stylistic evolution of the Beatles. Rubber Soul (1966) was the last album of their archaic period, blending the best kind of rock naivete with a mastery of simple forms. Sgt. Pepper (1967) represents the Beatles at their classic moment, fusing the pop spirit and an astoundingly eclectic range of sounds into a harrowing but harmonious whole. Their double-disk album called simply The Beatles, which has just been released in the U.S.,* may well...
High among their abilities, of course, is songwriting, and the album provides a handful of superb additions to the canon. The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, called an "all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son," is a cunningly simple ditty that flashes with hints of America's burgeoning violence and shrinking mythology. Cry Baby Cry demonstrates anew the Beatles' knack for rendering an Alice-in-Wonderland vision in a melancholy modern vein. Dear Prudence superimposes Indian-style drones and swooping tones on childlike lyrics ("Won't you come out to play . . . greet the brand...
Among other things, the Beatles in The Beatles seem to be signaling the listener that they have pulled back from the electronic adventurousness and the matic unity of Sgt. Pepper. Their new album is much more relaxed and modest. Well and good; there is no reason why Sgt. Pepper should be a shackling precedent for whatever follows. But when the foursome meander from style to style without any apparent guiding objective or sense of urgency, they seem to be substituting synthetics for synthesis. Even their renewed interest in the song styles of the English music hall and rhythm and blues...