The Beatles - Beatles For Sale (1964)

If the Beatles' career was like a trip on a highway - say, a long and winding one - then their 1964 album Beatles For Sale was their roadside rest stop.  The music on the Beatles' fourth album is mostly muted, dominated by acoustic guitars and deadened rhythms.  Apart from a couple of covers, there are no flat-out rockers.  A year before the Byrds invented folk rock and about half a decade before the oxymoronic term "soft rock" was coined, the Beatles presented in 1964 an album anticipating both genres.

Beatles For Sale literally was a rest for the group - they recorded it in between concert dates, on their days off from touring.  The wear on the foursome from all those live shows, which manifests itself in the music, is clearly visible on their faces in the front-sleeve photo; John Lennon looks especially gaunt.  It was the beginning of a time when the Beatles began to consider the studio their second home . . . and when they began to become less enamored with live performances.

The Lennon-McCartney originals on Beatles For Sale are, like those on the first three Beatles albums, still about boy-girl relationships, but most of them are rather pessimistic, especially John's tunes.  "No Reply" finds John's lovelorn narrator unable to reach his girl and finding out that she's been seeing another guy, while his "I Don't Want To Spoil the Party" tells the tale of a jilted guy excusing himself from a party to avoid bringing down everyone else . . .  with the hope of finding his girl.  In the Bob Dylan-influenced "I'm a Loser," though, John is playing no one but himself; it's the first of several intensely personal statements.  Paul isn't much more hopeful; "I'll Follow the Sun" is a sorrowful ballad about a young man seriously considering the idea of leaving his woman behind for a brighter future, while "What You're Doing" is a complaint of mistreatment that struggles with its own rhymes.  Their collaborative effort, "Baby's In Black," about a lover who refuses to shed her mourning dress for her previous, departed partner, is about as close to the blues as the Beatles ever got.

The Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins covers on this record are rather relaxed, and while one might have wished the group would have chosen a tougher Holly song than "Words Of Love" to remake, Ringo Starr and George Harrison respectively deliver lead vocals on the Perkins songs "Honey Don't" and "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby" with wry smiles in their voices.  The Beatles were still enjoying themselves singing the American rock and roll songs they loved - here, they delivered Chuck Berry's  "Rock and Roll Music" in one take - and even their take on "Mr. Moonlight," with harmonies sounding like Ricardo Montalban with a bad cold, has a perverse charm to it.  But they'd done better.

And yet . . . some strange things are going on here.  "Eight Days a Week," one of the few moments of unreserved joy on Beatles For Sale, has a faded-up introduction.  A Hammond organ solo and an African drum pop up on "Mr. Moonlight," while "Every Little Thing" (a Paul song that Paul sings with John, and another happy-love song on the album)  features a timpani drum.  The non-LP single "I Feel Fine," recorded in the same sessions (and included on the North American version of the LP, Beatles '65),  kicks off with guitar feedback.  Yes, the Beatles are giving themselves a rest, but they're also taking the time to expand their music.  What seems like a minor album is actually a prelude to the major innovations yet to come.