Rubber Soul Review

The change here is one of subject matter as much as sound. Norwegian Wood is a story about an affair that goes nowhere and possibly ends in arson, told in a deadpan that would have been unusable a year earlier, with a sitar doubling the melody because Harrison had one and wanted to use it. In My Life is a plain and devastating piece of writing about memory that arrives with a sped up piano solo pretending to be a harpsichord.

Nowhere Man is four minutes about a man with no opinions. Girl has the audible intake of breath that the band left in on purpose. Michelle and Drive My Car sit at opposite ends of taste and both work. The bass playing across the record is the best on any of their albums to this point, melodic and busy and mixed loud. Nothing on it is a novelty and nothing is filler, which is not something you can say about anything they had made before. The cover, warped and untitled, was the correct signal.