THE BEATLES [AKA: THE WHITE ALBUM]

For those familiar with the previous Beatles output, White Album may come as a negative surprise. The typical psychedelia/Merseybeat elements and studio experiments are gone to go down to Earth. Also, we have a collection of four individuals rather than a band which displays ambitions of the four members. At this point, McCartney was the only one with clearly commercial output like "Ob-la-di". He still has the strong sense of melody, grants acoustic guitar more prominence (I will, Blackbird) and explodes with "Helter Skelter/Birthday/Why don't we do it in the road" showcasing his great raw vocal skills. Not willing to rest on laurels, he also dabbles in country ("Rocky Raccoon"), Beach Boys territory ("Back in the USSR").

Lennon goes more alternative, feeling have a complete freedom over his songs without band's initial involvement. There are crown jewels like the complicated "Happiness is a warm gun", great blues number (for Beatles skills) "Yer blues", experimental "Glass onion", melancholic too short "Sexy Sadie" and the hard-rocking "Everybody's got..". "Cry baby cry" has the most typical Beatles chords sequence on the album. Even though not all his number are strong, strong melody and charm saves them ("The continuing story...")

Harrison steps out to be a force on his own with the legendary "While my guitar gently weeps" and pedestrian "Piggies" which has a use of harpsichord. "Savoy truffle" features interesting chord progression and reveals some of Harrison arrangement preference in the future career while "Long, long, long" is a competent sublime ballad.

Starr finally manages writing a solo song "Don't pass me by" which is decent but sub-par for the Beatles standards.

The strength of this Beatles album lies in its diversity, amount of talent that the three composing members put together. No other group could possibly try so many directions in 1968 with such good results. The only throwaway tracks are the two last "Good Night" and the annoying "Revolution 9". Also, it is questionable how much added value brings the bluesed "Revolution 1" comparing to the single.