The Beatles - Rubber Soul (1965)

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Rubber Soul, to me, is the quintessential Beatles album. Highly recommend this as your first foray into them. It has a bit of everything that makes the Beatles great so you can look at your favourite songs from the album and choose where to go next. This is also where the Beatles started becoming more experimental (Bob Dylan introducing them to cannabis might have aided in that) and it shows in every aspect of the album. The title, rendered as a stretchy blob (the style of which becoming a mainstay in psychedelia), their picture, each of them growing a bit more distinct compared to the early mop-top days, even just the strange angle and slight warp in the photo makes clear this is gonna be slightly off-kilter.

Also notable is the absence of the band's name. It might be the ultimate act of hubris to release an album without your name on it. "Sure, everyone will buy it, everyone knows it's us." And it worked, Rubber Soul sold by the truck load.

But what does it sound like?

Well in true Beatles fashion, it's excellent. It has a familiar warmth but with a little bit of bite to it. Definitely a new sound from them. From "Norwegian Wood" featuring a Sitar, to "If I Needed You's" twisted take on a love song, there was a lot of new stuff brought to the table and a side of The Beatles not previously seen.

But the one complaint I have, and I'm being very fussy here, it doesn't have even one or two of those Beatles songs. Incredible, close to flawless songs that make you understand why The Beatles were so highly regarded in just 3 minutes. Everything on Rubber Soul is excellent, I cannot state that enough, but I can't think of this album's "Here Comes the Sun" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

In a way it's the perfect transition album. While later efforts like "Sgt. Pepper", "Revolver" and "White Album" do everything this album tries to do but better, Rubber Soul serves as an excellent stopgap, familiar enough that it won't alienate their fanbase but experimental enough to appeal to the more artsy crowd, the camp I fall into. A perfect gateway into a completely new world for those expecting a more traditional Beatles album.

An extremely consistently excellent album with fantastic songs that brought new sounds to western music, but none of them reach the same heights as the best of Beatles like "Eleanor Rigby" or "Strawberry Fields Forever"