Love features many of their choicest moments re-assembled as the backing track for a Las Vegas spectacular by Cirque du Soleil. Lovingly slaved over for two years by Sir George Martin and his son Giles, it's a mash-up of remixes and re-combinations of Beatles tracks. Thus does Love open with an a cappella version of "Because", the harmonies accompanied only by a patina of birdsong, linked to the following "Get Back" by a reversed piano note one realises is the climactic chord from "A Day In the Life", backwards.  Full text...

Overall, the best Beatles mix tape ever!  Full text...

It's a dazzling, expansive experience that ranks among the year's best.   Full text...

Feel the LOVE  Full text...

The most genuinely interesting addition to The Beatles' canon in years, it actually makes you want to dig out the originals and fall in love with the music all over again.  Full text...

They were just a pop band, yes, but if anyone can bring all these music fans together under one tent, it's the Beatles. Which is what Love is ultimately all about.  Full text...

Completists will enjoy a newly unearthed demo version of "Strawberry Fields Forever", but it is the Martins' obsessive quest for innovation which deserves the garlands.  Full text...

Fab Four mash-up brings the magic back to the circus  Full text...

In about 2002, the bootleg mash-up was big news. A hopelessly named phenomenon that involved producers illegally mixing two unlikely old records together to make a third, the mash-up made celebrities of some strange figures - Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton and secretive producer Richard X among them - but the Beatles may have been the sub-genre's true stars.   Full text...

It may not be possible to actually improve The Beatles but give them a few fairytale flourishes and vaudeville strings and they can be reinvented for the Lost Vagueness Generation. For all the moaners and naysayers claiming that a better way to top up George Martin's pension fund might have been to re-release the Red and Blue albums with as good sound quality as this album has been afforded, there's a truly innovative string flourish, feedback scream and drum swell to assure you that Love is genuinely worth it.  Full text...

Love is a clip-and-save kaleidoscope of greatest hits and a novel stage show soundtrack, but little more than that in the long run.  Full text...

So then: press still looking for the next echo of Beatlemania; popular music still fun and occasionally beautiful; Love still a nebulous but inspirational concept; The Beatles still pretty good.   Full text...