Especially for Infobae of New York Time.

(Critics’ Notebook)

Imagine—or if you’re young or far enough away, enjoy—a time when Beatles songs were less familiar, not canonical, not fully integrated into the next generation of rock and pop. A time when the band that would become the most popular attraction in the western world was still four of them playing songs in a room in a relaxed and strange manner. However, the room in question was a fully-fledged recording studio—creating what was then a state-of-the-art four-track master recording—and for all their jokes, the Beatles also pushed themselves to flourish, all the while applying a cruel quality. control.

That’s what the expanded re-release of “Revolver”, the all-important Beatles album since 1966. Like Bob Dylan, who switched to electric guitar on two albums in 1965 and released “Blonde on Blonde” in June 1966, The Beatles have pushed the boundaries of what constitutes a rock song. But “Revolver” was the decisive move; The Beatles were determined to sound weirder and more special than ever.

Like previous re-releases from The Beatles archive, the new “Revolver” set, released Friday, is based on the UK version of the album. The five discs—CD or vinyl—including the album in mono and new stereo mixes along with two discs (mostly) of previously unreleased studio tracks, reveal the progress of the songs. (The two CDs taken from the session are shorter than necessary; only about 40 minutes each, matching the vinyl versions of the set. There’s room for more.)

Even the expanded “Revolver” doesn’t explain why The Beatles, already on top of the world, are so eager to challenge themselves again. However, “Revolver”, after all, is an artifact of the mid-sixties, when things were constantly changing and musicians were expected to be prolific. Prior to “Revolver”, The Beatles had put out six UK albums as well as standalone singles, an output reconfigured into 10 US releases. They have also released two films, interspersed with grueling tours.

Just two years earlier, The Beatles had become the “Fab Four” leading the British Invasion on American pop radio. They are a charming group of men with long but neat hair, in matching suits without collars, always smiling and joking, climbing to new levels of international pop success and with fans who hiss higher than the band’s amps.

The Beatles came to be masters of musical conventions and how to bend them. They’ve enjoyed relaxing tunes, British music halls, Tin Pan Alley, 1950s rock’n’roll and more; they have developed excellent reflexes over the years of playing at the club. Even early on, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote songs that cleverly added unexpected chord changes and had a hint of ambivalence in the lyrics that provoked the listener’s reflexes and then avoided them. Many Beatles songs also take that extra touch in the last few seconds, simply because the band has too many ideas at their fingertips.

The Beatles and their producer, George Martin, went beyond teen pop themes and toyed with studio illusions on 1965’s “Rubber Soul.” “Revolver” wasn’t the more or less grandiose conceptual album they were about to release. in 1967, “Sergeant. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. But it was just as groundbreaking: a clear statement that the Beatles would follow no hope other than their own.

“Revolver” begins with George Harrison’s “Taxman”—a political-financial rant—and ends with “Tomorrow Never Knows,” an avant-garde cosmic hit with lyrics inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Among these are more musings about death, from Eleanor Rigby’s lonely funeral to unhealthy thoughts about “She Said She Said.” What kind of pop group is so eager to contemplate death and taxes?

There are still love songs on “Revolver”—the cozy devotional harmony ballad of “Here, There and Everywhere,” the gleeful hype of “Got to Get You Into My Life”—but they share an album with profound insights. more ambiguous than “I’m Only Sleeping” and “I Want to Tell You,” the mood-altering sarcastic speech of “Doctor Robert,” and the constant reproach of “And Your Bird Can Sing.” Obviously, The Beatles no longer felt they should strive to be loved.

On “Revolver,” The Beatles went to great lengths to find a way to distort reel-to-reel analog recordings. They started recording sessions for “Revolver” after a four-month break—their first break since 1962—and they arrived excited to experiment. As the intricately layered sounds they’ve crammed into just four tracks, they’re starting to enjoy new mechanical manipulations: loops, reversals, decelerations, accelerations. The band members have been experimenting with LSD and now want to make hallucinatory sounds.

Despite being the cover of the album, the first track from the “Revolver” session is the most radical: “Tomorrow Never Knows”, a pure studio construct. The syncope rhythm track—just one Ringo’s percussion bar and an octave-hopping bassline—is a tape loop, as is the drone mimicking a sitar, seagull effect (Ringo’s laughter actually). McCartney sped up), orchestral sounds and reverse guitar weaving in and out of the mix. Between Take 1 (included in the set) and the final version, the arrangements were almost completely changed, removing and recreating most of the backing tracks. However, all the studio work took only three days.

The new mix of expanded “Revolver”, made with the latest technology and 21st century ears, is a delight; they have more transparency and a more three-dimensional sense of space than the 1966 mix. But the remix sacrifices the vintage eccentricity of the original stereo version, which was completed in a day as just an afterthought for the more rigorous mono version, when stereo was a novelty.

Old stereo mixes can sound sloppy or downright avant-garde. Multiple instrument and vocal tracks are heard on one channel, which separates the music, especially when listening with headphones; This is still a bit confusing. The new version is more in tune with the expectations of the stereo era, bringing vocals and lead instruments closer to the center, but luckily not mixing them up too much. They made me appreciate again the agility with which Starr hits his instruments, and the many faulty eruptions of extra percussion and ghost vocals throughout the album.

Five decades later, it’s not easy to listen to “Revolver” as if it were the first time. But this new set confirms that the clearer it sounds, the weirder it gets. “Revolver” still holds some surprises.