 No group has been as consistently creative as the Beatles, though the [Lovin'] Spoonful and Beach Boys are coming closer all the time ... Rather than analyze the music we just suggest that you listen to "Revolver" three or four times a day and marvel ..." Later that year, in "Esquire", Robert Christgau said the album was "twice as good and four times as startling as "Rubber Soul", with sound effects, Oriental drones, jazz bands, transcendentalist lyrics, all kinds of rhythmic and harmonic surprises, and a filter that made John Lennon sound like God singing through a foghorn".In the 2004 edition of "The Rolling Stone Album Guide", Rob Sheffield wrote that "Revolver" found the Beatles "at the peak of their powers, competing with one another because nobody else could touch them"; he described it as "the best album the Beatles ever made, which means the best album by anybody".Writing for "PopMatters" that year, David Medsker said that "Revolver" showed the four band members "peaking at the exact same time", and he deemed it to be "the best of the bunch, the letter that went unanswered" among a series of reciprocally influential musical statements exchanged between the Beatles and the Beach Boys over 1965–67.