After ‘Dub Side of the Moon’ and ‘Radiodread’, the Easy Star All-Stars continue their assault on all things prog by tackling the super stoned grandmother of all prog albums head on. The Beatles’ classic needs no introduction; if you don’t own it then you must be someone who thinks The Rolling Stones were the best band ever. Mug.
It takes nuts enough to cover a classic song, and covering classic albums in their entirety means you have to have a nutsack the size of Gibraltar. But to do it three times? Well that’s just silly. Plenty of reggae acts in the ‘60s were covering the fab four’s multitude of singles as they climbed charts and shipped overseas: you’ll even find a Trojan boxset filled with at least 50 Caribbean takes on the Mersey foursome’s favourites.
Stepping into the album then, expect to walk into some nutty rub-a-dub music with vocals provided by some legendary ska and reggae performers. Ranking Roger (The Beat), U Roy and Max Romeo are amongst just a few of the icons appearing here. But, you know the concept, you get the idea and you can imagine how it sounds. In case you don’t, it’s as though this particular CD has been manufactured from a molten block of the finest Afghan black, which has been poured into your CD player by a magical Rastaman, and is somehow playing one of The Beatles’ finest albums as you sit back to sip a crisp Pino on your exquisite Debenham’s sofa. And therein lies the problem.
Dub is traditionally a fuzzy combination of bass, echo and dirty drums. These are the most compelling and heartfelt aspects of the genre and, at its best, it’s as though you can smell ganja smoke wafting through your tweeters as fat fingers inside the bass cone roll another spliff and push the fader up for an extra bit of reverb. Though Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band is certainly a jump-up reggae thrill, it is so slick that it loses a little heart – and in doing so, it loses a bit of soul. Considering that Sgt Pepper’s came out in 1966. a little more dedication to the feel and recording techniques of that era would not have gone amiss.
Nevertheless, this is an album that will plant a smile on your face six miles wide and cause irregular heartbeats. The fantastic pop of ‘With a little help from my friends’, the extended dub of ‘Fixing a hole’, the raved-up dancehall of ‘She’s leaving home’, and the ragga-carnival flare of ‘Being for the benefit of Mr Kite!’ are all highlights on the album. ‘
And, of course, I couldn’t not mention ‘A day in the life’ which now contains the line “Woke up, got out of bed, ran my fingers through my dreads,” as sung by Michael Rose. Sadly, though a brave attempt, this version is neither wide enough in its scope or imagining.
This is a great effort by the All-Stars, but with far more to dub reggae than drum fills, melodica and tape delay and with far more to the epic vision of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – this release falls just short of essential.