With the Beatles Review

Made in stolen days between tours, this is the debut done again with better equipment and more confidence. All My Loving is the one everyone knows and it deserves it, a walking bass and a triplet guitar figure driving a melody that never sits still. Money and You Really Got a Hold on Me are covers played with real appetite, and the group's ear for what to steal was always sharper than its ear for what to write.

Don't Bother Me is Harrison's first credit and it is sour and minor and interesting in a way the Lennon and McCartney tracks here are not. The sleeve, four half lit faces in black, did more for the band's image than anything on the tape. What holds it back is the writing, which is still working almost entirely in the register of wanting a girl and saying so. The playing has jumped a level, the singing has jumped two, and the songs have not caught up yet. A good record from a band about to make far better ones.