YELLOW SUBMARINE SONGTRACK

This one's a tricky CD to assess on the star-rating scale. Yellow Submarine Songtrack isn't really an expanded rerelease of the original 1969 Yellow Submarine album, as it omits half of the original LP. It's also not simply a hits compilation, as several of the songs are lesser-known; furthermore, since the tracks are remixed, they differ somewhat from the familiar versions. Finally, it's not precisely a soundtrack album. First, it excludes one of the Beatles songs from the 1968 Yellow Submarine movie ('A Day in the Life'), although all of the other fifteen are present. But the missing half of the 1969 album is George Martin's orchestral score for the film, and it's been pointed out that these recordings would've fit quite comfortably in the runtime of the Yellow Submarine Songtrack CD.

The remixes on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack are not reinterpretations à la Love; in fact, they are pretty faithful renderings, using only the original tracks, but realized using late-1990s technology. And they sound great. 'Eleanor Rigby' is starker that the original, and takes a bit of getting used to, but most of the songs just sound clearer and cleaner. 'When I'm Sixty-Four' in particular sounds absolutely fantastic, as do 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' 'With a Little Help From My Friends,' and 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' - - the other Sgt. Pepper tunes. It really is a shame that 'A Day in the Life' was omitted.

Those five songs, plus the title track, are the strong cuts here. Now, second-rate Beatles songs are still pretty good songs, but the fact remains that more than half of the Yellow Submarine Songtrack is comprised of second-rate Beatles songs, including all four of the songs which debuted on the original album.

So, how to rank the Yellow Submarine Songtrack? On one hand, it's another compilation, in this case a compilation of songs which every Beatles fan already owns, and yet not a best-of album by any stretch. It's a nice tie-in to the 1999 rerelease of the Yellow Submarine film, but is otherwise nonessential. On the other hand, it has the best-sounding mixes available of several Beatles classics.

The official Prog Archive guidance has two stars indicating an album for 'collectors/fans only,' and that's my best estimate for the Yellow Submarine Songtrack. A casual fan looking for a single-disk compilation would do better with 1 (2000), even if they'd be missing out on the mixes here.