![]() ![]() This is hardly the first time someone has covered the whole of Sgt. The result is closer to an act of Yellowism than to any Roy Lichtenstein-ish intention, which prompts the question, why am I listening to this when I could be listening to the original? With the exception of Auto-Tune, (here cheaply employed on the title’s namesake, just for LOLs), almost all of these effects were available to the Beatles when they were creating their absurdist masterpiece, yet George Martin et al used them only sparingly, always in all the right places and always to great effect. They don’t take us far enough away from the original to offer anything new, but seem more preoccupied with stuffing their covers’ membranes with as many modern digital effects as they can take, like filling prophylactics with mashed potato. Why should they? Nonetheless, there’s an overwhelming sense of pointlessness looming luridly over every facet of this record. Apparently they don’t give a flying fuck. Flaming Lips have nothing left to prove, having given us a string of unique and brilliant-sounding records since the mid ’90s. So we have a band that couldn’t care less what any of us think of them. To argue the intelligent accomplishments of With a Little Help From My Fwends is what I’m tasked with doing, however, and to be honest, spotting them is the hardest thing. To argue the intelligent accomplishments of SPLHCB (of which there is inarguably a wealth) would only produce a lengthy and one-sided article that’s already been written a thousand times over. Luckily we had jazz, blues, rock & roll and pop music, the early apex of which, arguably,was the Beatles’ Sgt. The British fin-de-siècle philosopher James Allen said that “until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment.” If pop musicians had strictly adhered to this theory in the 20th century, our audible present might well have become a grandiose horror-show of turgid pomposity, with the great cultural touchstones of our past supplanted by over-cooked ELP-type atrocities, or we’d have all just bloody given up. Best of all, the pieces come from a place of respect… usually. As ever, though, they do so from a musician’s perspective, a rare and very valuable point of view. It does take a little gumption to knock the work of one of your peers in such a high-profile forum, but plenty of Talkhouse writers have registered their displeasure. People often ask, “Are there ever negative pieces in the Talkhouse?” There sure are, and we figured it was time for a week’s worth of outstanding pans. ![]()
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