The Beatles - With the Beatles (1963)

More than their debut album, Please Please Me, the Beatles's second Parlophone LP established the band as a force in rock and roll to be reckoned with.  With the Beatles, released in November 1963, is nuttier, noisier, and happier than their already joyous debut album - but it is also better produced and performed, and the group's songwriting was undeniably better.  The overall sound is also more professional and more electric than Please Please Me; by the summer of 1963, the Beatles were growing more comfortable with working in a recording studio and responded to producer George Martin accordingly.  The guitar riffs are crunchier, Paul McCartney's bass lines are more fluid, and Ringo Starr gets more mileage out of his cymbals; whole songs are bathed in their clashing sounds.

The original songs themselves demonstrate the Beatles' versatility.  With the Beatles explodes out of the gate with "It Won't Be Long," an energetic number expressing longing for a girl, and keeps up the pace with tunes like the country-tinged rocker "All My Loving" (a number one single in Canada) and the slyly biting "Don't Bother Me," George Harrison's debut as a composer.  The lyrics in these songs all concern boy-girl relationships, of course - what else do young people think about? - but the music is exciting and bold. You go ahead and shake your head to the lyrical repetitiveness of "I Wanna Be Your Man," Ringo's vocal showcase here; I'll just play air guitar to it.      

But then, something was definitely happening with some of the lyrics as well, with verses that could be just as honest as the crashing guitars in their jet-propelled rockers.  McCartney mentions sex in "Hold Me Tight" ("making love to only you"), and John Lennon, once again baring his emotions, achingly resists a heartbreaking woman's attempt at reconciliation in "Not a Second Time."  (This is the song that music critic William Mann praised for its similarities to Gustav Mahler's "Song of the Earth," with its "Aeolian cadences," as if it mattered. :-D)  Their cover versions are also as diverse as ever, as Paul makes the show tune "Till There Was You" his own even as the band pulls off a slashing cover of "Roll Over Beethoven," with a lead vocal from George, that surpasses even Chuck Berry's great original version.

Of course, the Beatles, far from being just a rock and roll band, were fans of all music, and they cared passionately about all of it.  If there was ever a white band that could cover three Motown songs on the same record and match the original beauty of  Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold On Me," the urgency of the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman", and the energetic independence declaration of Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)," this was it.  By the end of 1963, the Fab Four were seasoned professionals who were about to take on American popular music in America itself . . . and win.  With the Beatles - released in January 1964 as Meet the Beatles! in the U.S. with an altered track listing - is why.      

(This is my last Sunday record review for awhile. I've been overextended lately, and I need a break.  I don't know when I'll resume record reviews in full force, but it . . . won't be long.)