Imagine you are part of an up-and-coming band that has started to garner some serious regional and perhaps national attention. Then, one day, you get a call asking if you would like to participate in a major project paying homage to some of the best recordings of the Beatles.

Well, this is exactly what happened to Portland-based band Adventure Galley. The band appears on the recently released album “Beatles Reimagined.” Released on the Community Music label, the album is a collection of 10 tracks featuring some of the best-known cuts from the 1963 and 1964 recording sessions by the Beatles.

“Beatles Reimagined” comes out in honor of the 50-year anniversary of these classic recordings, with proceeds from the album helping to support the Rock ‘N Roll Camp for Girls in Los Angeles. Reimagined is a delightful collection of cuts that nearly everyone knows. Do not be dissuaded by the fact that the tracks on the album are covers. Instead of abiding to the cover song playbook, the bands were given freedom to reinvent these songs.

From the intro of each song, these versions are entirely new. Rather than molding the sound of the band to the original song, the bands styled the songs to their existing sound. The result is a collection I think would fascinate Lennon and McCartney.

Night Panther gives “I Wanna Be Your Man” an ‘80s pop-psychedelic -dance feel and throws in some killer guitar to boot. “There’s A Place,” contributed by The Leftover Cuties, brings to mind old black-and- white films with a small orchestra fronted by a female singer in a fashionable white dress suggestively putting words into a vintage microphone, highlighted with a single spotlight in an otherwise dim, smoke filled room.

Adventure Galley’s version of “Please Please Me” has a post-punk synthed up feel that has its rhythm cut down to half time, for a slower feel. If The Cars and Rik Ocasek recorded the song, this is how it
would sound.

And on and on. For anyone with a passing interest in The Beatles, the album is a terrific journey back in time that explores how the band might sound had they come onto the music scene any time in the last 20 years. Along the way, you will discover some very talented bands that we will surely be hearing more of in the coming years.

For Adventure Galley, the national exposure could not have come at a more opportune time. The band releases “Anywhere That’s Wild,” their first full-length album, on Wednesday.

THE CD: “Beatles Reimagined” is now available in both physical and digital forms. If purchased from iTunes, listeners receive two bonus cuts not available on the physical CD.

ON TOUR: Adventure Galley appears at Holocene on Wednesday, Nov. 20, for a CD release party. The gig starts at 8:30 p.m. and is free. 1001 SE Morrison, Portland, OR

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