The Beatles ‎- With The Beatles (Remastered) (2018) Vinyl

Would that today's PRs had the honesty of Beatles pressman Tony Barrow. On the original sleevenotes for With the Beatles he cheerfully admits that the group were following the formula of Please Please Me, going so far as to make several track-by-track comparisons. "[Paul McCartney] recalls the numerous Cavern Club occasions when this item ['Money'] brought forth the same type of overwhelming response given to 'Twist and Shout'."

Barrow's notes are direct and descriptive-- crediting each R&B find, noting which tracks were live favorites and who played what. They're an intriguing glimpse of how the band related to its audience in this first shock of pop success: as curious, educated listeners, not the blind screamers of Beatlemania legend. By this point, though, the Beatles were kings of Britain with the world about to follow. Their success was already game-changing: The band who would go on to invent the concept album invented the boy band first. The cheek, the gang mentality, the picking favorites-- all this would be formularized by later svengalis but emerged initially out of Beatle fandom.

So With the Beatles is simultaneously a quickly turned-around cash-in and a record of real generosity and integrity. And if the structure of the album is pretty similar to Please Please Me, the extra studio time is already starting to tell. On McCartney's romantic spotlight, showtune "Till There Was You", producer George Martin builds a wholly convincing soft-focus soundworld around Ringo Starr's bongos. The group harmonies on tracks like their rumbustious "Please Mr. Postman" are even more gorgeously thick. The way the drums rumble in on "Roll Over Beethoven" is a moment of simple joy.