My immediate thought when I heard about a fourth volume of the Anthology series was of a Bob and Tom radio show sketch, where the guys offer an ad for Anthology 43 and the songs are absolute bottom-of-the-barrel offerings of guitar tunings, the guys waiting for John to turn up at the studio, and Ringo hitting a drum repeatedly to get the right sound. The joke was that the series had already exhausted the well of alternate, in-process and unreleased Beatles tracks across six CDs and any more would be overkill.
Then, as Beatles reissues started coming out from 2009 forward, bonus discs revealed even more content; more early versions of songs, outtakes and demos kept popping up. The 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s had 33 extra songs from 1967 alone, including Take 12 of “Getting Better,” George coaching the Indian musicians for “Within You Without You,” a studio speech and Take 3 of “Fixing A Hole,” and the instrumental first take for “She’s Leaving Home.” For a certain collector/fan, these would be irresistible.
I mention those titles because that was what the original Anthology offerings were, separated into periods (62-64, 65-67, 68-70). The big news at the time was the “new” songs “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love,” completed with the three surviving Beatles playing alongside Lennon demos. A couple years ago, another surviving Lennon demo called “Now and Then” was found and punched up in a similar way, becoming not only an official Beatles track but the “final” Beatles track.
Because all of this has been available for many years, there’s not much of a reason for Anthology 4 to exist, and indeed 23 of the 36 tracks are taken from those original album reissues and compiled here. Remixed versions of the three “new” songs are also tacked on to the end, for those who wanted them in one place, I suppose. The rest is a mix of the usual early takes, rarities, studio jams and other ephemera that, somehow, has 
still not been released despite being recorded 55-60 years ago. How the world’s biggest band still has material like this in the vaults is baffling… and also, one wonders, inspires curiosity as to whether it really needs to be released.
So, the album ends up targeting a specific fan: those who didn’t buy all the re-releases with the bonus tracks, but who want a selection of said bonus tracks in one place as well as the “new” songs, all together. It’s a compilation of tracks deemed not good enough to make the first three Anthology collections and then 13 “new” songs that, as expected, are just early takes or one-offs of album tracks.
The first three Anthology collections told the parallel story; you could already know the Beatles catalog and as such enjoy following along to hear how their best songs took shape and hearing their rapid sonic evolution (2 remains the absolute best, charting an astonishing path from Help to Sgt. Peppers). 4 follows a similar chronological path but offers nothing new, nothing that makes you rethink or reappreciate a song.
That said, this is still the Beatles, and it’s still a joy to listen to them race through an early “I’ve Just Seen A Face,” work on early versions of “Nowhere Man” and “In My Life,” and let Paul issue a shambolic, cutesy track called “Can You Take Me Back?” that would appear in a truncated form as the coda to “Cry Baby Cry” on The Beatles. There are jokey asides (the marijuana and Coca-Cola order to Mal Evans on the early start to “Baby You’re A Rich Man,” followed by Paul saying “Well, now we have that tape for High Court tomorrow,” is a hoot). There’s an instrumental-only version of the string section for “I Am The Walrus,” which is vaguely interesting but only needs to be heard once.
Of some historical interest will be the rehearsal at the BBC for the worldwide premiere of “All You Need Is Love,” featuring John’s vocal live with the orchestra; the developing madness in the “second version” of “Helter Skelter,” and the first rooftop performance from the Let It Be concert, “Don’t Let Me Down.” And owing to new technology, “Real Love” and “Free As A Bird” clarify Lennon’s vocals a bit more, though I prefer the originals. Hats off to Giles Martin, though, who continues to do his father proud with the production on any Beatles project he comes across.
One final note: Despite the longtime wishes of some fans, this compilation does not include Lennon’s original demos for the “new” songs or the freakout of “Carnival of Light,” a 1967 demo that was Paul’s first foray into the avant-garde, long before John got into it, and a track that would directly influence “Revolution 9” the following year. Shame, as that would have made this far more interesting. Instead, it ends up being more of the same; sporadically entertaining, fitfully interesting, and mostly pointless.