The Beatles Gregorian Songbook- Schola Musica

1) The Abbey's Bell 2) There is a Place 3) Nowhere Man 4) Strawberry Fields Forever 5) Tomorrow Never Knows 6) Within you Without You 7) The Inner Light 8) Blackbird 9) Mother Nature's Son 10) Because 11) The Word 12) All You Need is Love 13) Let it Be 14) The End

I really wanted to like this album. 

Like a lot of music fans The Beatles are one of my favourite bands and like a lot of music fans I'm thoroughly familiar with the majority of their music. So what better than listening to a new take? Granted if this album had been released back in the 60s the counterculture would have perished and Richard Nixon would be President to this day but there's still something delightfully quirky about the idea that when Franco made me aware of it I was hooked straight away. 

Unfortunately the music itself is anything but quirky. It's dull, ponderous and reverential. Listened to in the right mood though this can be quite affecting and at times the music almost reminded me of dark ambient. I mean think of it, a dark gothic church with a bunch of cloaked men standing inside lit by candles and singing Beatles songs. Or more precisely turning the previously charming vocal melodies of John, Paul, George and Ringo into the type of music that would make the sinless repent. 

Yeah this album really didn't work for me. In some places I was quite taken with it and the version of Strawberry Fields Forever they do actually manages to retain a quasi-psychedelic feel, though a creepier more autumnal one. Most of the other songs sound like a beautiful cake that has been crudely stuffed into a bucket and become an unseemly mush. Or to be more direct the vocals sound like they're all mushed together. I was initially confused by this as one of The Beatles strongest assets was their vocal melodies and while you'd think this would result in a rather beautiful album as Gregorian Chant is based on vocals (hooray for the obvious!) it really doesn't. The vocals sound generic and murky. This temporarily caused me to lose faith in The Beatles but the more I thought about it the more I realised why. The Beatles vocal melodies whilst great have a certain casualness to them; they don't sound belaboured. This doesn't translate to a type of music that I've deemed that math rock of the 16th century (or whatever). 

What I'm trying to say is maybe The Beach Boys would have been better for this tribute. They're American though so fuck 'em (is what the Chuch said). 

Anyway this album is great in places like I said and the songs with more deliberate vocal melodies do work -though surprisingly Let it Be doesn't- but on the whole it's tedious as all hell. George Bernard Shaw said "The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity". The same could very easily be applied to this album. Like the exact same quote, weird I know. 

However I don't want to be too harsh because it really is a rather great concept and some of the songs work. I'd recommend listening to "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Nowhere Man", "Blackbird", "Because" and "All You Need is Love" on Spotify. For Christ's sake don't buy the thing! 

So to conclude this album didn't do much for me and it's a shame they didn't finish off with a version of Revolution 9.