L ars Baby you’re a rich man The newly released definitive Beatles box-set offers glorious remastered sound, eco-friendly packaging By Corrigan Hammond, The Silhouette (McMaster) HAMILTON (CUP) — The last time the Beatles catalogue was reissued was in 1987. The emphasis, however, wasn’t on the audio quality of the recordings, focusing instead on the physical act of making content available on the new CD format. As a result, an entire generation of Beatles fans has grown up listening to what many critics have asserted are subpar versions of some of the Fab Four’s seminal discography. Indeed, as anyone who listened to the group’s 2006 experimental Love remix album can attest to, the audio on those old Beatles CDs sounds flat and dated compared to the infinite sonic possibilities and musical potential of the digital era. After four years of dedicated work though, it looks as though Sir Paul McCartney and company may have finally realized the music’s digital potential. Each cut on each disc is beautifully cleaned up as the dense and carefully layered details of the music are subtly realized for the first time in over twenty years. Hearing these remasters isn’t like listening to a replica of the old recordings, like the 1987 set attempted to do, but rather like experiencing the quality of audio that you would expect from a top grossing contemporary act releasing a new album. The remaining Beatles have taken the time to go through each track and not only enhance the audio— bringing up the bass on the drums, the treble on guitars or spreading out the sound for a more full, room filling experience—but they’ ve also taken time to correct some of the band’s notorious flubs. Gone, some critics complain, are some of the technical flaws, like Ringo’s famous drum stool squeak midway through “A Day in the Life,” that gave the records a distinct flavour—although most listeners who never noted such imperfections will be awed by the new vibrancy brought to their old favourites. Then there’s the old packaging, which, predating the now industry vogue digipaks, seems big and bulky in those ugly plastic jewel cases. The sleek packaging for the new fourteen reissued discs is almost like a mini-version of the old gatefold record sleeves—an effort to imbue them with a timeless quality capable of transgressing the disposability attached to so much music in a twenty-first century cultural landscape obsessed with free content. Branding, the buzzword-du-jour for the savvy businessperson, has in recent years never been far from Sir Paul’s mind. Through the new digipak packaging, he hopes to once again align the group and their music with pertinent social issues — this time climate change. And like a number of his fellow ‘60s classic rock alumni—everyone from Bob Dylan (who began experimenting with special edition digipak packaging for the 2003 reissues of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde), to CCR and Leonard Cohen, who both reissued comprehensive back catalogues last year—the Beatles have recognized the potential to use new and creative packaging as a medium to both 12 K Re ee produce albums in a more ethical manner and present cover art as “it was originally intended to be.” Strangely though, the same attention to detail that has produced a beautiful production—the Beatles’ trademark obsession with creating music that is both uncompromisingly artful and undeniably popular — may prove to be the project’s critical undoing. While, without a doubt, the music deserves to be presented in its fullest and most vibrant potential, the barrage of hype that pre-empted the 09/09/09 release date has produced a number of sneers that the new reissues are merely a cash grab, particularly since many Beatles fans and collectors already own very comprehensive collections of the group’s music. It isn’t uncommon to find Fab Four fans who not only own the complete Beatles discography on CD, but also on vinyl, cassette and sometimes even eight-track. Nothing was left to chance with regards to the project’s success. Not only did the surviving Beatles, Ringo and Sir Paul, reunite on stage this past summer, offering the pair a rare moment of genuine glee and excitement following a glut of bad press for both men, but, in an effort to compliment the excess of Beatles brand merchandise that began appearing in stores last spring, the group even coordinated the release to coincide with their very first video game, The Beatles: Rock Band. Even the date was strategically chosen to coincide with John Lennon’s famous and mythologized karmic fascination with the number nine— bucking the normal industry practice of issuing content on Mondays in Europe and Tuesdays everywhere else, and insisting on the once in a thousand year opportunity of “09/09/09.” Many observers in the record industry are curious to see whether the high-quality physical product being placed in stores, complete with limited edition mimeograph posters and bonus DVD documentaries, will sway sales away from online digital music retailers like Amazon and iTunes. Some stores have even offered trade-in deals on old Beatles CDs. That said, enjoy —40 years since disbanding, the Beatles have never sounded so good. The Beatles Box Set is available now from Apple/EMI.