I'm late to this party as well. I didn't rush out to get this upon release. I have to admit that I have never been much of a fan of this album. In fact, if you catch me in a bad mood, I will go on record saying it is the most spectacularly overrated record of all time. If I'm in a good mood, I will just make my point by saying it's not even in the Beatles' top 5 (that being made up of White Album, Revolver, Pepper, Rubber Sould and A Hard Day's Night or Magic Mystery Tour if you count that). How this record can regularly check out in the top 5 of all time album lists is just beyond my comprehension. Maybe it is the silly mythology surrounding it that rubs me the wrong way - the BS tale of how the Beatles "all pulled together one last time, to make their ultimate album, the four pals from Liverpool, oh how they loved each other, and in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make" etc etc.
To my ears, so much of the Beatle "magic" is gone by 1969. It was starting to faulter by late 1967, although there were certainly lots of flashes of brilliance after that. But there was a wide-eyed excitement and "otherness" to anything up to and including Pepper and most of Magical Mystery tour. After that, they seem to sound much more ordinary (partly be design, of course, by shedding the psychedelic sheen). I love The White Album though, just for its sheer bloody-mindedness and warts-and-all approach.
Abbey Road, on the other hand, always sounded to me like sanitized Beatles. Half-baked songs wrapped up in posh and lush production to hide the weaknesses ("The Long One" in particular). There was something distant and detached about it. For all these years, I just could never get beneath the surface of the album, and I have been wondering why I dislike it so much. Song by song, even though there are tracks I don't care for at all, it is strong enough that I shouldn't actively dislike it so much. If I tried to evaluate it critically, and setting my biases aside, I would still rate it a 4 star album (the vocal harmonies for one thing are frequently stunning and influential, just listen to The Pretty Things' great Parachute album, which sounds like an Abbey Road rip-off in the vocals department). But for a 4-star album, I sure have a way too active disliking for it.
Until now, I could not quite understand wh, but now I know: I just hate the production and/or the mix on the album! The surround mix opens it up and reveals everything! What sounded removed and distant and detached, is now enveloping and intimate and engaging! Love, love, love this mix! The surround mix on The White Album was fine, even great, but this is stellar to my ears. It doesn't change the material on the album (still uneven and sometimes lackluster, with flashes of brilliance), but what's there is much easier to enjoy. I think I will actually listen to this again, which I hardly ever felt compelled to with the old stereo mix.
8 for content, 10 for the mix, so a 9 from me.
