So let's talk about the songs that kinda matter. "Surfin' Safari" is basically the prototype for all of the up-tempo well-harmonized pop rockers the band would do about surfing, with Mike sounding like he's been singing these kinds of songs forever. "409" is similarly a prototype for all of the up-tempo well-harmonized pop rockers the band would do about cars, and the cross of Mike's good delivery of the main melody with the great nagging "giddy up giddy up 409" backing vocals from the others makes this probably the best song of the lot. Jumping over to the second side (after less than 12 minutes of music, sheesh), we come across the band's first hit of note, the pre-album single "Surfin'," an oddly raw sounding song with a fascinating rising-and-falling "ba ba dippity dippity" low-pitched Mike line in addition to his regular lead vocals, and it almost sounds more like a well-crafted mash-up parody of garage rock and the stereotypical early Beach Boys sound than an actual early Beach Boys single (this isn't an insult, believe it or not). The band's cover of "Summertime Blues," with Carl taking lead vocals with David Marks (who plays rhythm guitar on this album and some other early ones), is rather timid and doesn't speak that highly of the band's abilities with 50s rockers, but it's decent enough, and more importantly it seems like the awesome reinvention that The Who gave it was largely based on this version.

The one deep cut that I consider of note, "Cuckoo Clock," is also the only track on here where Brian takes lead vocals, and there's an odd and eccentric charm in it that suggests better than anything else on the album that the band could grow into something beyond its simplistic roots. The song, which tells the story of a teenage couple that keeps getting interrupted by a cuckoo clock until the boy takes it apart, features Brian singing "cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo" in the most amusing falsetto, and the other features (like the others repeatedly singing "tick tock" and the fun organ solo in the bridge) show a tremendous sense of wit on Brian's part, and while the song isn't quite as well-written as the more famous singles, it's definitely the one that brings the biggest smile to my face.

So ok, this isn't more than a mediocre listen, but at the same time, isn't it kind of remarkable that a 25-minute album with 10 minutes of truly worthwhile material could grab me enough in its best moments to get even this high of a grade? There's no real need to seek the bulk of this out beyond the hits (and "Cuckoo Clock"), but at the same time those songs are definitely worth seeking out for anybody who's interested in the 60s era of the band.

So that leaves seven proper songs (totalling well under 15 minutes), and while the band is clearly making some progress, there are still some duds along the way, mostly crammed on the second half. "Noble Surfer" and "Finders Keepers" both showcase Mike Love at his corniest, and "Lana" shows that Wilson's gift of writing great ballads was one that he had to grow and develop, not one that he was just born with. Fortunately, the other four songs (all on the first side) are bonafide early classics for the band, and they're enough to help barely pull the album's rating up as high as it ends up. The title track is basically a straight cover of Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" with new lyrics, yes, but the harmonies are spectacular enough and the vibe fun enough that I can overlook this, and the band manages to rock out in an early 60s way better than they did at any moment on their debut. The two ballads, "Farmer's Daughter" (an upbeat and cheerful number with the typical great harmonies but also with an incredible high-pitched delivery from Brian that's enough to make it one of my favorite early songs from the band) and "Lonely Sea" (a downbeat and dreamy number that transcends its doo-wop foundation in a way that creates the first truly incredible atmosphere on a Beach Boys album) are terrific and point the way to the future, and "Shut Down" is basically a better-produced and more confident version of "409," which is enough to make it a two-minute classic.

Still, four great songs and a couple of decent instrumentals are not enough to save a 25-minute album, and as much as the better songs show clear improvement in production and in the sophistication of the band's harmonies, these improvements get drowned out by way too many other negative factors. At least Capitol was kind enough to release these two albums on a single CD and charge accordingly.

The first five tracks milk surfing as a concept for all that it's worth, and while I don't care too much about "The Rocking Surfer" or "South Bay Surfer" (a decent enough song with a less heavenly vocal sound than I'm used to with this era) I find the other three range from good to great. "Surfer Girl" had actually been the first song Brian had ever written, and the band had recorded it early on, but they ultimately re-recorded it for these sessions, and the effect is magical; the warmth of Brian's voice crossed with the backing harmonies, over the 12/8 backing part, is the best stereotypical depiction of PG teenage affection I can think of. Where "Surfer Girl" is the slow ballad classic of the album, "Catch a Wave" is the up-tempo surf rocker classic of the album, with a perfunctory (but awesome) harp thrown in to complement the great harmonies and the alternating lead vocals (as well as the fun repeated organ snippet). "The Surfer Moon" isn't quite as spectacular of a ballad as "Surfer Girl," and the orchestration doesn't actually benefit the song that much, but it's fun to hear Brian and co. stretch themselves a bit, and the song is lovely enough.

The first side ends with the band dipping into its other favorite vocal subject, cars, and the result is "Little Deuce Coupe," a 1:38 mid-tempo churning ditty that I've never considered especially interesting other than in regards to the harmonies ("Shut Down" seems much better to my ears), though Frank Zappa apparently really liked it (because it had a V-ii chord progression inside it) so I suppose there's probably a long treatise to be written about why it's so great if somebody really wants to write it. Flipping over to side two, there's a very silly surfing-centric song in "Surfer's Rule" (a Dennis-sung song that begins with the cringe-inducing line "It's a genuine fact that the surfers rule!" but is pretty fun otherwise), a decent car-centric song in "Our Car Club" (which features a a horn-heavy arrangement that's almost enough to make me overlook the really dumb lyrics) and a decent ballad in "Your Summer Dream," but the side also features a pair of songs that are at least 90% as good as the great duo that kicked off the album. "In My Room" is a surprisingly deep song for 1963, about finding solace and safety in the confines of your bedroom, and the vocal harmonies add a lot of heft to these lyrics and the graceful melody. And finally, "Hawaii" may be really stupid lyrically, but the interaction of the high and low vocals makes it more enjoyable than it probably should be, and I'm glad to have it here.

By the standards of what the band would be doing in just two years, this isn't an especially amazing album, but I think it's fair to say that, without "Surfer Girl" or "In My Room," there probably wouldn't have been "Please Let Me Wonder" or "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)," and that should mean something. I'm glad that the surf-centric era of the band ended with this album (they weren't done with "lightweight" music by any means but it would soon be refocused), but they ended the era a significantly better band than when they started it.

There's no need to rehash my brief impressions of the tracks that had previously made it onto albums, and I'll just say that, if I had to pick a favorite track on the album, it would probably be "Shut Down" (but really, the four previously released tracks are all in the top half of track quality on this album). As for the other tracks, they're mostly decent, albeit not on par with the best material of the previous albums, but it's not like they really had a chance to come out better than that. The lowest point (and which isn't related to cars at all) is almost certainly "Be True to Your School," an incredibly cheesy anthem for the sad sort of person whose days in high school would forever prove to be the best time of their lives, which probably would have ended up as Mike Love's fate if he hadn't been lucky to have Brian Wilson as his cousin. The other non-car track here is "A Young Man is Gone," an a-capella reworking of "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" (with lyrics changed to serve as a tribute to James Dean), and it gives a chance to enjoy the greatness of the band's vocals unencumbered by anything else. As for the car songs, well, they're ok overall; "Car Crazy Cutie" and "Cherry Cherry Coupe" both have strong vocal hooks in both the main melody and in the backing vocals, and there are decent things to extract from each of the others (I actually find the lyrics to "No-Go Showboat" pretty funny, for instance). These remaining tracks (the 4 aside from "Car Crazy Cutie" and "Cherry Cherry Coupe," I mean) probably would have been better off as rarities or B-sides for die-hard fans than as actual inclusions on a Beach Boys album, but they would have been decent rarities nonetheless.

As much as anything, I'm just flabbergasted at how pointless this album is; if the four previously released tracks hadn't made it here previously, then I might regard this album a little more highly (enough to boost it a point), but the fact is that they had been released previously, and for somebody like me who believes that albums best function as something more than arbitrarily slapped-together collections of individual tracks, this is a crippling blow. Yes, there's an argument to be made that this is a very early example of a "concept album," but I think that's giving a little too much credit; this much more closely resembles the product of a small temper tantrum (which it really kinda sorta is) than something the band carefully planned out. Don't be in a rush to get this.

Any album that can begin with five minutes of material on par with "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "Don't Worry Baby" is going to be worth something, of course. "Fun, Fun, Fun" may once again feature Carl aping a classic Chuck Berry tune a little too closely (it's not a full-song emulation that required an after-the-fact reassignment of songwriting credit like "Surfin' U.S.A." did, but playing this and "Johnny B. Goode" back-to-back will raise an eyebrow), but the song is terrific anyway, with Love singing an insanely fun melody while supported by one of the band's best vocal harmony arrangements in a fast song. If "Fun, Fun, Fun" is the album's primary Mike Love showcase, then "Don't Worry Baby" is the album's primary Brian Wilson showcase, with one of the band's best vocal harmony arrangements in a slow song and with Brian's vocals doing all sorts of falsetto gymnastics on top of the gymnastics of the main melody. I somehow became familiar with this song long after I'd become familiar with the other major Beach Boys hits of the 60s, but it's an absolute doozy and one of their best of the era.

Oh, but the rest. "In the Parking Lot" starts and ends with some very lovely harmonies, but the bulk of the song is auto-pilot Love that pretends it's still 1962, and it's not worth much. Then comes the first really stupid part of the album, which is sadly the longest by a good distance: "'Cassius' Love vs. 'Sonny' Wilson" is a 3:30 skit that basically sounds like a PG version of the skits that would come out of the Flo & Eddie era of Frank Zappa a few years later, and while there's some unintentional humor in hearing them poke at each other given how much their artistic philosophies would stand at odds in a few years, it doesn't help me like it any more. "The Warmth of the Sun" is a lovely ballad with some (relatively) gnarly chord changes, but that's immediately followed by "This Car of Mine," a completely forgettable piano-based number with Dennis showing that he still wasn't ready for primetime as a lead vocalist.

The second half starts on a pretty high note with the band's cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" (which would be a pretty trite choice if the song didn't fit the band's vocal talents so well), and "Keep an Eye on Summer" at least sounds like a classic Beach Boys ballad (even if it's not striking enough to rank as one of the band's best), but the rest barely gives the sense that they were even trying to make the balance of the album decent. There's a completely forgettable original ("Pom, Pom Play Girl"), a completely forgettable instrumental ("Shut Down, Part II"), a COMPLETELY FORGETTABLE cover (how on earth did The Kinks and The Beach Boys, two of the best bands of the 60s, end up each recording such mediocre "Louie, Louie" covers?), and an inexplicably pointless drum solo ("Denny's Drums") to close the album. Who was the person who kept telling the band that people were interested in hearing tracks that didn't include their vocal parts? WHO???

The best thing that ever happened to the band was for this album to not do especially well on the charts; while it wasn't exactly a commercial dud, it struggled enough to creep up the charts for the band to realize that they were already on the verge of becoming an anachronism, and it helped make clear that the band needed to change some things. It's worth having copies of the best songs somehow, but unless you can find a copy of this for $1 or thereabouts, don't worry about getting this album.

As is typical for the band at this point, the album starts off with one of their commercial and artistic high points of the era, but even that seems like a bit of an undersell; "I Get Around" is not just the best single the band released prior to 1965, but I feel like it's pretty clearly their best song to this point. I've heard the song plenty of times in my life, but I'll never stop feeling a bit of awe at how much power they get out of the a-capella harmonies singing the main hook after Dennis' drum hit and before the main instrumental part comes back. It also definitely helps that there's no aping of Chuck Berry to be found in this one; the track sounds 100% the Beach Boys' own, and it deserves to have become their calling card almost as soon as it was released.

None of the other songs come close to this one, of course, but this time around, the gap between the lead single and the rest is more of a function of the greatness of the single than the general mediocrity of the balance. As usual, the songs roughly split into the categories of up-tempo pop-rock and gentle pop ballads (with a decent instrumental, "Carl's Big Chance," thrown in for good measure), and both sides are represented well. Ok, so there are a couple of Love-heavy pop-rockers in the second half that I don't really love ("Do You Remember" is a nostalgic reminiscence of the previous 10 years of rock'n'roll that shows Wilson trying his best to rewrite "Roll Over Beethoven" without crossing the line into plagiarism, and "Drive-In" straddles the line between intentional self-parody and unintentional self-parody in the lyrics a little too much for me, even if it's a lot of fun and the idea Mike Love gorging himself on chili dogs cracks me up a little), but this group also includes the exquisite "Little Honda," featuring a scuzzy (in a good way) guitar sound and an intoxicating rush in the "First gear! ... Second gear! ..." chorus. The closing "Don't Back Down" is also a fine member of the bunch, with the band making one last nod to its surfing past (until it would be revived for nostalgia on 20/20) in a song with some glorious falsetto on top of the great harmonies and a weirdly jarring non-resolution in the "...they grit their teeth/they don't back down" line.

The ballads, then, all range between good and great, and their consistency is a large part of why this album gets as high of a rating as it does. The title track can't help but create a tremendous amount of nostalgia for those days when summer was actually something to look forward to, and the arrangements, full of xylophones and tenor saxophone and piccolos, are an absolute delight. "Hushabye" is a cover of a doo-wop song by a group called The Mystics, and while I don't know the original, I'd be amazed if the vocal harmonies in that one were as shattering as the ones in this version. "We'll Run Away" shows Brian taking another lyrical step towards the starry-eyed romantic idealism that would characterize so much of Pet Sounds, and while the lyrics slightly make me roll my eyes in the same way that some of the Pet Sounds lyrics do, they're nonetheless attached to a song that's so perfect in every other way (melody, vocal delivery, arrangements) that I just have to give into them. Flipping over to side 2, the introduction to "Wendy" momentarily makes it seem like it's going to be a shockingly dark and unsettling number from the band (every time I hear those opening guitar and bass notes, before the song switches into a more up-beat mode, I find myself instinctually waiting for it to turn into something from Freak Out!), but it quickly becomes more conventional, with the band doing its memorable harmonic bliss thing as well as ever. And finally, "Girls on the Beach" is more-or-less a sequel to "Surfer Girl" (with Dennis doing the best his strained voice could do at this point for a couple of lines), but it's a good sequel, and it would have been a highlight on Shut Down Vol. 2 for sure.

It's hard for me to speculate as to exactly why this album would have shown such a stark improvement over the band's previous work. The most convenient scapegoat is Murry Wilson, whom the band fired as manager in the early stages of the sessions (though they couldn't fire him from being Carl/Dennis/Brian's father), and who had certainly been instrumental in pushing the band towards pushing out as much product as possible within a relatively narrow stylistic approach. Then again, as domineering as Murry might have been, Brian was still a grownup who could make some of his own artistic decisions and experience artistic growth regardless of what shackles might have been in place. And honestly, focusing on that leads to what I feel is the most satisfying explanation for why the band made such a great jump with this album; Brian was given a little more freedom and time to make music at a higher level than before, but he also consciously recognized that he needed to reach that level for the band to continue to have success, and he worked to develop his craft so that he could reach that level. Anyway, rambling aside, this is the one album to own from the band's pre-Today life if you're only going own one (or maybe go with this and a comp or something along those lines), and I also can't stress enough that, more than any other of the band's early albums, this sounds way better in mono than in stereo.

Still, as much of an odd live/studio chimera this might be, it still makes for a pretty fun listen the first couple of times through, and the fact that I don't think it's very good doesn't mean I don't kinda enjoy it. The setlist is pretty weird, but that's somewhat to the album's benefit. Six of the tracks had previously been on studio albums: "Fun, Fun, Fun," "Little Deuce Coupe" (where the band provides an instrument-by-instrument introduction even though not every instrument is audible), "In My Room," "Let's Go Trippin'" (where Mike instructs the audience to shout the title during the introduction), "Hawaii," and "I Get Around." The other seven tracks are covers, and they're kind of a hoot on the whole, even if I don't really like all of them individually. "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena" and "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" sound like they'd been originally written for The Beach Boys, and the closing "Johnny B. Goode," for whatever notes Al Jardine might screw up, is a rip-roaring way for a bunch of stiff white guys to end a set in 1964. Elsewhere, "Long, Tall Texan" and the Dennis-sung "The Wanderer" make little impression on me, and while I sheepishly admit to kinda liking the band's version of "Monster Mash" (and of COURSE Mike Love's favorite song in 1964 would be "Monster Mash"), I can't really say the same thing for the slow and schlocky "Graduation Day" (though I do smile a bit at Dennis jumping in too soon on the final note), which features an introduction with Mike Love already at peak corniness.

In trying to make sense of my feelings towards this album, I found myself careening back and forth between a 6 and an 8 rating almost to the very end, before finally splitting the difference and settling on a 7. For all of the various issues I have with it if I allow my brain to power up beyond the most basic levels I need for survival, I still think it's a pretty fun album to put on when riding on the train at the end of the day, and the album's best covers are enough to justify its existence. Still, if this wasn't available for pretty cheap as part of a 2-fer with Live in London, I'm not sure I could recommend for anybody to get this. As is, if you can find the 2-fer cheap (and why couldn't you), this is worth hearing a couple of times, even if not much more than that.

I have my doubts as to how much Brian and the others really wanted to record a Christmas album; the sessions for this were in June 1964 (except for "Little Saint Nick" which had been recorded in 1963), which, aside from being the time of year least conducive to making somebody think about the Christmas season, was also right around when Brian was giving serious thought to how he wanted Today! to sound. I'm sure that their handlers were able to convince them (correctly) that recording this would guarantee them an automatic hit record once it was released later in the year, but that only adds to my cynicism regarding the crass lack of sincerity seeping out of this album. The first five songs are band originals, with Brian fleshing out arrangements for them with the same relative care that he would for the band's regular material to that point, but the other seven feature the band members singing standards over orchestral arrangements put together by Dick Reynolds. The band does as good of a job or better in singing the standards ("Frosty the Snowman," "We Three Kings of Orient Are," "Blue Christmas," "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," "White Christmas," "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and "Auld Lang Syne," which is interrupted by Dennis giving a cheesy "Thanks for listening ..." spiel in which he partially flubs his lines) as anybody else would; Brian sounds so at home in singing tracks like "Blue Christmas," in fact, that it's not hard to imagine a universe where he'd never become a songwriter and instead had made a career as a top-notch vocal interpreter of standards. And yet, while The Beach Boys do a fine job with these songs, I still can't help but feel that this material was beneath them at this point.

The five originals are ok, but they don't go much further than that. "Little Saint Nick" was originally released in 1963 as a single, and while it's kinda fun and memorable and all that, it's also a blatant rewrite of "Little Deuce Coupe" in some ways, and I always find that aspect a little distracting. "The Man with All the Toys" has some enjoyable hooks (mostly due to those spiking "oh!" backing vocals) and some great Wilson falsetto, but at 1:32 it ends up feeling somewhat slight and underwritten. "Santa's Beard" is bouncy Love-centric pop on auto-pilot for two minutes, and while I like the "hope he thinks that's Santa Claus" part, the song is little more than a trifle. The other two songs are somewhat of a step above, though, and suggest that Brian could have made this album into something more if he'd so desired. "Merry Christmas Baby" is a good combination of bouncy and compact in its melody, with a nicely varied arrangement (handclaps interacting with the melody early on, more typical harmonies in the background later on, some other twists as well), and with some changes to the lyrics this could have fit in just fine (as a relative highlight) on their previous albums. And finally, "Christmas Day" is the band's first instance in a while with Al Jardine on lead vocals, and while his voice isn't angelic in the way that Brian's could be, it's rough in a way that works as a good balance to Brian and Mike (Dennis' rough voice would soon accomplish a similar function for the band, but to this point his roughness didn't really work well), and the mid-song organ solo makes for a great counter to the gentle guitar arrangement of the rest.

I can't hate this album, of course, but it's also impossible for me to like an album such as this, so a mediocre grade is pretty much the only solution for me. I could see where a die-hard fan could enjoy this a lot, and I suppose that, if you're somebody who generally enjoys Christmas albums, this could be justified as one of the better Christmas albums out there (these are, after all, vocal arrangements from the Beach Boys around their prime). If you don't fit either of these categories, there's no reason to spend money on this.

The most striking aspect of this album, especially when coming to it in chronological order, is how much craft has gone into these songs. Along these lines, it's important to focus on three particular things that helped contribute to this album's overall quality. The first is just how much time the band had between the releases of All Summer Long and Today!, a whopping 8 months, whereas the longest gap between their studio albums to that point had been just under 6 months. As much as I'm not a huge fan of either Concert or Christmas Album, these albums had nonetheless served as acceptable release stopgaps (without requiring a tremendous amount of additional work from Brian) that bought Brian some time. The band did record some advance singles for release in the couple of months after the release of All Summer Long (which made it onto Today!), yes, but in previous years Brian would have been expected to have an entire album ready by November, rather than having the luxury of just releasing a handful of new songs and finishing the rest later on. The second development of note was that Brian decided to retire from touring in December, in favor of working on the band's studio albums full time, and the band actually accommodated him, replacing him in live performances first with Glen Campbell and then with Bruce Johnston. And third, in addition to his newfound surplus of time to mull over songwriting and production ideas, he received a newfound expansion to his creativity through developing a marijuana habit starting in January, 1965. All of these factors (in addition to having an army of session musicians suddenly at his disposal courtesy of The Wrecking Crew) helped contribute to Brian testing out ideas and approaches that wouldn't have been feasible a year earlier.

In addition to the advancements shown in the individual songs, this marks an advance for the band in terms of album construction. The album is clearly split into a "pop-rock" side and a "ballads" side (with a really dumb two minute interview excerpt tacked onto the end for good measure), thus marking the clear end of the days where the band would identify hit singles it would want to emphasize, stick those near the beginning, and then haphazardly order the rest of the material. The first side, with all of the pop-rock songs, doesn't tend to get as much love as the second side does, but I enjoy it a great deal; the improvements to the band's overall sound are manifested in these first side songs nearly every bit as much as they are manifested in the second side songs. The opening cover of "Do You Wanna Dance" (with Dennis on lead vocals), for instance, could have plausibly made it onto an earlier Beach Boys album, but it wouldn't have sounded anywhere near as incredible as it does here. The song ends up working incredibly well with a full Spector-ish treatment (my favorite touch is the tympani), and Brian makes the vocals live up to the power of the overall sound; Dennis' rough vocal is terrific here, and when the band comes in for the fully harmonized chorus, the effect is nigh unto religious ecstasy, a vibe not yet heard on a Beach Boys album (but which would be heard plenty later on). "Good to My Baby" (based around a nice up-and-down guitar riff) is simplistic pop at its core (with Mike Love contributing pro-monogamy lyrics), but it's amped-up simplistic pop, with a rich backing track, top-notch harmonies, and great back-and-forth between Brian and Mike. "Don't Hurt My Little Sister" (based around Brian's complicated relationship with his wife and her sisters) was actually written by Brian with the intent of Phil Spector handing it off to another group (The Ronettes), and while that didn't pan out (though a version of the backing track eventually made its way to The Blossoms under a different title), I'm glad it stayed on this album; the main melody is a bit of a trifle, but the Wilson-led backing vocals in the verse ("Why don't you love her ..." etc) are amazing, and the song is quite nice overall. "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" is a cute rumination of the effects of aging upon a person's personality and tastes, but the most striking aspect is the inclusion of a harpsichord, which would become relatively commonplace in pop recordings within a couple of years but was still a novelty in popular music at this point.

Up next is the original album version of "Help Me, Ronda" (later "Help Me, Rhonda"), and while this version isn't quite as polished as the better-known single version, I've long had a soft spot for this supposedly "weaker" version. Ok, yes, the repeated "let's play with the volume" tricks are a little silly, and some aspects of the arrangement are more polished in the single version, but I've always thought that the rougher sound of the Today! version matched the slight roughness of Al Jardine's vocal very well, and I feel an emotional kick to the "Help me Ronda yeah/Get her out of my heart" part here that I don't quite feel in the single version. The single version is great, but I'm glad both versions exist. And finally, the first side closes on a very high note with "Dance, Dance, Dance," which strikes me as showing a sort of genius in the same way so many Ramones songs would show a sort of genius a dozen years later; the lyrical topic is as basic as can be (going home, turning on the radio, and dancing a lot), but the opening bass introduction, the surf guitar solo in the middle, the cross of Brian's "I gotta dance right on the spot" with the band's "Dance dance dance right there on the spot," and ESPECIALLY that rising "Dance Dance Dance YEAH!" part all combine to make this close to the pinnacle of the band's "early" style (it doesn't quite match "I Get Around" for me but it's gotta be at least 95% of the way there).

Then we have the second side. Truth be told, "Please Let Me Wonder" is so spectacular that I instinctually end up considering the four songs that come after it a bit of a letdown, but that's just a matter of sequencing; on their own, every song on this second side is a gem. Supposedly, "Please Let Me Wonder" is the first song Brian wrote under the influence of marijuana, and while I don't know if the "first" part of that statement is 100% accurate, I do think it's pretty clear that Brian was working on a different plane than usual when he worked on this. Brian had hinted at this kind of sound before with "Surfer Girl" and the like, but there's an echoey, float-y quality to the song that the band hadn't worked with yet, and the cross between the vulnerable Brian vocal, the vulnerable secondary Mike vocal (Mike actually wrote the lyrics believe it or not), and especially that thick regal backing part singing the title creates something way beyond what the band had created in its ballads previously (the mid-song instrumental passage, with the organ part punctuated by guitar chords, is a great touch as well). The random "I love you" near the end has always struck me as maybe a step too far, but that's just a minor nit-pick.

"I'm So Young," which comes next, is a cover of a doo-wop song originally recorded by The Students (but covered by many others in the interim), and while it can't possibly live up to the originals on the side, it nonetheless features a great Brian lead vocal, and sometimes the cross of a great Brian lead vocal and nice backing vocals is enough from The Beach Boys (though some of the moments when Dennis gets a little too high in the mix of the backing vocals are a little eyebrow-raising). "Kiss Me Baby" is also relatively slight, sounding more like a slightly souped up version of the band's earliest ballads than a major advancement, but again, let's not overthink this; Brian's lead over the band's vocal harmonies is every bit as blissful here as elsewhere. Much more impressive is "She Knows Me Too Well," which is far deeper in the lyrics than much of what Brian had done to this point (it's about a man who is obsessively insecure about his own obsessions and insecurities), and which has a melody that sounds straight off of Pet Sounds when we hear it today (but there sure wasn't any Pet Sounds back then to serve as a reference point). When Brian goes into falsetto when singing, "But she knows me, knows me so well ..." it's just an incredible moment. And finally, the album bookends (again, if you ignore "Bull Session with the Big Daddy" tacked onto the end) with another Dennis-sung track, courtesy of "In the Back of My Mind," where Dennis' rough vocals work shockingly well against the orchestral backdrop, especially with the occasional saxophone part that doesn't sound entirely clear how it's supposed to fit in (that's a compliment, as it matches the tone of the song well).

In retrospect, I wish I'd heard this album sooner (I didn't get around to it until 2004, whereas I'd begun listening to Pet Sounds in 2000 and assimilated the post-Smile albums in the interim). Before I heard this, I had been lulled into a narrative of "The Beach Boys made disposable, albeit well-harmonized, pop music until one day they got serious with Pet Sounds," and that mindset significantly impeded my ability to understand the full appeal of the band. I would go so far as to say that, if I could do it over again, I wish I had heard this first, even before Pet Sounds. Again, I wouldn't say this is the band's best album, but I would say that it is the fulcrum on which their pre-Smile career rests, and it is an absolutely essential album for anybody who feels positively inclined towards 60s pop music. Its relative brevity (once again, the album is well under half an hour, even counting the pointless ending track) and the presence of "Bull Daddy" precludes it from receiving an even higher grade, but that's just nit-picking. This has to be considered one of the best albums of 1965, which was a pretty decent year all things considered.

The first time I heard this, the relative lack of seriousness in the first five tracks put me off pretty strongly, but I got over this within a couple of listens. "The Girl From New York City" and "Salt Lake City" may have the feel of throwaway tracks from the band's earliest albums (not least because of the lyrics, especially in the latter), but musically they have great hooks, solid riffs (especially the sax riff in "New York City," fortunately not played by Mike), and a big, forceful sound to match the impeccable layering of vocal harmonies (which likely would have been the sole strong suits of these songs had they been written three years earlier). "Amusement Parks U.S.A." makes little effort to conceal that it's basically a sequel to "County Fair" (one of the lamer tracks on Surfin' Safari, which I guess they were assuming many fans didn't have at this point), but it strikes me as a good deal better than its predecessor, and I kinda enjoy Hal Blaine's carnival barker voice-overs. "Then I Kissed Her" (sung by Al) is a cover of "Then He Kissed Me" by Phil Spector (and performed by The Crystals) that tells the story from the guy's perspective, and it's a terrific cover as long as you can get beyond the way that hearing the story from the guy's perspective lends it a tinge of creepy misogyny (though I suppose this could be a result of listening to it so many years later and with more PC ears). And "Girl Don't Tell Me," while it may have a curiously strong resemblence to "Ticket to Ride" in its main chorus hook, is still a very strong number in its own right, with a great vocal from Carl (though curiously without any backing harmonies, I suppose to give it a more "raw" feel than was typical for the band at this point).

The heart of the album, which tends to receive praise even from those who look down on the rest of the album somewhat, lies in the next three tracks. Side 1 closes with the single version of "Help Me, Rhonda," and again, while I like the roughness of the original quite a bit, I can't deny that the polish of this version (largely courtesy of the additional session musicians) gives it a lot of advantages, and the backing vocals in this one are just great. "California Girls" is an indisputable classic; the opening twenty seconds, an orchestrated passage without clear connection to the rest of the song, are a wonder of nostalgic atmospheric bliss, and the main song is another glorious example of Brian's ability to bring a sense of quasi-religious seriousness to an otherwise lighthearted topic (in this case how California girls are so much more attractive than other girls regardless of how attractive other girls might be), and to do so without letting it sound kinda silly in the process. I'm not sure I would go as far as to consider it their best song (like Brian does) but it's certainly in my top 5. The last track in this group is "Let Him Run Wild," which, along with "California Girls," continues the advances of Today! more emphatically than anything else; the song is anything but straightforward, mixing a stately atmosphere with vocal and instrumental arrangements that are energetic and unpredictable, and the soaring falsetto on top of the chorus makes for a spectacular moment. Brian apparently later decided he hated the song, but that seems like an odd perspective to me.

The remaining four tracks end the album in somewhat of an understated way, but I like them on the whole. "You're So Good to Me" is a case of the band clearly trying to sound different from its normal self, creating something that sounds vaguely Motown-ish and vaguely psychedelic, and the "la la la" backing vocals over the otherwise silly lyrics, "you're my baby/don't mean maybe," make it into a track worth keeping. The instrumental "Summer Means New Love" is Wilson's first foray into writing the kind of Hollywood-influenced orchestrated instrumentals that made it onto Pet Sounds (and which he might have kept writing had things not gone badly for him after that album), and if it's not spectacular it's still rather nice; the guitar part from Tommy Tedesco sounds great in particular. The closing "And Your Dreams Come True" is basically the exact opposite of that instrumental; whereas "Summer Means New Love" was an instrumental that featured none of the Beach Boys except for some piano from Brian, this is a minute-long a capella piece with all of the band members (including Bruce Johnston, who appears on a handful of tracks on this album), and it makes for a deeply satisfying way to end the album. Sandwiched in the middle of all of this, however, is the album's weirdest track, the glorious "I'm Bugged At My Ol' Man," where Brian engages in some self-therapy over the awkward relationship with his father (who by this time had, among other things, hit Brian in the head hard enough to make him deaf in one ear) by singing an equally awkward melody about his dad punishing him over small things while Carl and Dennis chime in with some of purposefully least-pleasant backing vocals the band ever did. In any objective sense, it's not a good song at all, and yet it's so silly and charming, and yet so incredibly sad (when one knows the full story of the relationship of Murry Wilson with his sons), that I enjoy it immensely, and I couldn't possibly imagine the album without it. It also becomes a fairly eerie listen once one considers the increasing struggle with mental illness that Brian would start facing in a couple of years; at the time it would have just seemed like an odd throwaway, but in retrospect it's obvious that things were already slowly turning the wrong way for him.

Don't skip this album! Maybe it doesn't have as many peaks as on Today! or Pet Sounds, but it also marks the end of ill-conceived comedy skits on Beach Boys albums (unless you count "I'm Bugged At My Ol' Man," which I wouldn't do), and while it owes much to the band's earlier style it also shows a level of quality control that the earlier albums most definitely lacked. If you're interested in the band's 60s albums, this is a necessity.

This album makes for a fun listen (the first couple of times; afterwards it becomes tedious), and it's a clever solution to the problem they faced, but it's a pretty pointless album, and I can't imagine that the band would have considered making it if they didn't have to. By any reasonable measure, both the singing and the playing on the album are very sloppy, and while I understand that they weren't trying to not be sloppy (to contribute to the loosey-goosey "party" atmosphere), that doesn't mean I have to ignore this. There's some novelty to be had in hearing the band cover three Beatles songs ("Tell Me Why," "I Should Have Known Better," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"), and I definitely like the band's versions of "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" and the closing "Barbara Ann," but as fun as sloppy covers with artificial party noise on top of them are, it would be more fun to have properly rehearsed covers without artificial party noise on top of them.

The album was a big commercial hit, of course; the choice of covers is good for the most part (I didn't mention all of them but there's no point in writing a dozen variations of "this is a semi-endearingly sloppy rendition of a good song"), and it would make for good background noise (especially for somebody's own party) if somebody wanted to listen to it in that way. Well, sometimes the masses are just flat-out wrong; to regard this as a legitimately good Beach Boys album, in my opinion, would be to attribute a level of crassness and banality to the band that just wasn't merited at the time (maybe if Mike Love had been the band's dominant force it would have been, but he wasn't). Unless you're a major fan of the band, don't bother.

While this album is (almost) universally looked upon as one of the greatest accomplishments of the first couple of decades of rock/pop music, the initial reactions to it were not especially enthusiastic, and I can understand why. In some ways, large chunks of this album are essentially extensions of ideas and approaches that Brian had introduced on Today!, but the ideas from Today! that Brian used as a launching point were, themselves, ideas that largely broke from the conception of what constituted the core sound of The Beach Boys. The rumors of band in-fighting were overstated (aside from Mike, who maintained an attitude of hostile skepticism through the recording the process, the band members eventually realized they were involved in something special), but Capitol wasn't especially thrilled with Brian once again breaking from an established formula for success, and I can't help but view Capitol's decision to issue a greatest hits album two months after Pet Sounds (with the GH album emphasizing the "traditional" version of the band) as a passive-aggressive middle finger extended towards Brian. In terms of sales, the album didn't do especially well in the U.S., though it did significantly better in the U.K., and while the album would eventually be treated by critics as an all-time great, it defintely wasn't received at that level initially.

Today, we can kinda just shrug our shoulders at this and say something like, "Brian decided to do something different, and people don't always know how to handle things that are different when they're initially presented, so it's not too much of a surprise that Pet Sounds was only appreciated later." This leads into another question: yes, Brian made something different with this album, but what exactly did he make? Today, we categorize this album, for the most part, as "pop music," but this sure wasn't pop music by the standards of 1965 and earlier (and it definitely wasn't pop music in the established style of The Beach Boys). Brian had always thrown some odd twists and quirks into his songs, yes, but this album is packed with musical phrases that don't start or end in quite the "right" way (again, by standards of the time), and I know from experience that this tendency led to me not feeling entirely satisfied with some of these songs for a good while. At the same time, though, this album doesn't entirely work as "art music" either, and that's not just in regards to the looming burst of art-rock into the music scene over the next few years. The arrangements on this album show an incredible attention to small details, yes, but they're not sophisticated in a "traditional" sense, and why would they be? Brian had established himself as a master of writing short pop songs (as long as he was given the time to not write bad pop songs), but in terms of trying to reach beyond that, he was completely self-taught, and this lack of formal training left him at a disadvantage to even the most average composer of Hollywood soundtracks in terms of orchestrating large ensembles. All he could rely on was the sounds running through his (increasingly drug-saturated) brain and his instincts for whether something sounded "good" or not; he couldn't even fall back on displays of technical bravado like art-rockers could 5 years down the road.

In bringing up these points, it may seem like I'm somehow putting the album down, as if I'm saying that, because the album doesn't completely succeed in any of the individual artistic areas it straddles, it doesn't completely succeed, but this is not my intent. The means by which the music on this album was created ends up reminding me of an unusual point of comparison, and one that I also consider a great work in its artistic area (if a small step below the works that I consider the absolute cream of the crop): I am referring to "The Symphonie Fantastique" by Hector Berlioz. For those of you whose knowledge of classical music doesn't extend much further than being able to hum "Ode to Joy," or for those of you who know classical music well and are baffled by this mention, I'll elaborate. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was a French-born Romantic composer who had tremendous aspirations and self-regard to match, but who had little formal musical education and wasn't an especially gifted musician himself. In 1830, he completed his first symphony, "The Symphonie Fantastique," and it was a smash hit despite the fact that it was an absolute mess if evaluated by the compositional standards and expectations associated with the Viennese Classical era (which had started to fade out during Beethoven's life but continued to hold on to relevancy well into the late 1820s). It completely subverted traditional expectations in regards to how a given "theme" was used; when it "developed" an idea, it often approached the task with a focus on the manipulation of arrangements more than on the manipulation of melody and harmony; its primary focus was taking the listener on an emotional journey, as opposed to an intellectual one; and, perhaps most important, there's a clear psychedelic element to it (by the standards of the day), in particular because (a) Berlioz (probably) composed some of it while on opium and (b) the associated program involves the main character taking opium and having a dream in which he's executed and then wakes up at a witches' sabbath. Bringing things back to Brian Wilson and Pet Sounds, I find this comparison apt largely because both Wilson and Berlioz, in composing their respective works, were far more concerned with what sounded good to them than with what made sense by the standards of the day, and in doing so both of them created near-masterworks that went down in history as significant groundbreaking milestones that were great influences upon musical eras that came to value self-expression as highly (or more so) as adherence to traditional forms. Also, the drug part (though the impact of drugs on Brian's art was definitely less morbid than the impact on Berlioz).

There is one general aspect of this album that, more than anything else, still keeps me from fully embracing it; I just can't get myself to like the lyrics that much. The lyrics for much of this album were written in collaboration with a man named Tony Asher, and while the ideas behind the songs tended to originate with Brian, the bulk of the actual words came from Tony. The band had never been big on abstraction or obfuscation in its lyrical approach, but there's a straightforward emotional bluntness to a lot of the lyrics on here that strikes me as dopey even by the standards of the band. Yes, a good deal of the lyrics of the album tackle more complicated topics than Brian had typically tackled previously (at least, if we ignore the second half of Today! and tracks like "Let Him Run Wild"), but these topics tend to be approached in the sort of way that would probably seem deep to somebody who loved this album in high school but would seem silly to somebody who got into it a few years later (like I did). I got used to this aspect eventually (which is part of why my opinion of the album increased over time), but I've never completely gotten beyond it, and at this point I doubt I ever will.

Regarding individual songs, it would be possible, were I so inclined, to devote a paragraph at least to each song, so densely arranged every single one is. Well, that seems like overkill, so what I'll do instead is go song-by-song and list a handful of things (nowhere near exhaustive) that jump out at me about each.

"Wouldn't it be Nice": The mindset of "All my emotional problems will be solved if only I can just get married" seems laughable to me as an adult, but the song is spectacular anyway. The key signature jump between the harp introduction and the main song is jarring but terrific. The use of baritone saxophone (which I swore for years was a bassoon until I looked it up) in the song is my favorite minor detail. The song would be 25% less fun without the accordion. Mike's sung parts make for good contrast to the main melody.

"You Still Believe in Me": The slow gliding up and down of the vocal melody is absolutely heavenly. The vocal harmonies on "still" when singing the title give me chills. The bicycle bell and horn (that has to be what they are, right??) are such random inclusions and I couldn't imagine the song without them. The false ending is probably unnecessary but it's great anyway.

"That's Not Me": Maybe this is one of the more "normal" songs on here (partially because Dennis actually plays drums and Carl plays guitar) but it sure isn't "normal." I have no idea if Mike cared at all about Brian's fears and self-doubts but he does a good job of pretending he does in his delivery. The wilting descent at the end of each vocal phrase is such a nice touch. "I once had a dream / so I packed up and split for the city" is such a great, evocative line. The backing vocals are sublime.

"Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)": A gloriously hallucinogenic depiction of how time and reality seem distorted when you're around somebody you're deeply in love with. The string arrangement is spectacular, and the slow upright bass part when Brian intones, "...and let me feel your heartbeat" is great tone painting. The slow stately tympani is a nice touch as well.

"I'm Waiting for the Day": A good song, but probably my least favorite on the album (apparently it was written back in early 1964). The lyrics here are WAY too literal for my tastes (Asher is off the hook here due to the song's age); years ago, I had this album playing in the car while driving on a date, and I had to skip to the next song because it was too on-the-nose for the situation at the time. Brian's voice sounds a little goofy at times as well (I was actually surprised to find out it was just him). On the plus side, I really like the alternating use of woodwinds in the background (English horn in one verse, flutes in another), and the contrast between the big bombastic instrumental breaks and the more gentle verses is enjoyable enough.

"Let's Go Away For a While": A nice instrumental that Brian apparently didn't intend to be an instrumental (he planned to add vocals to it but Capitol didn't want any more time spent on the song than what had been spent already). I'm not sure it's dramatically better than "Summer Means New Love" but it's still pretty. The contrast between the heavy emphasis on vibraphone in the beginning and tympani in the end is a neat touch.

"Sloop John B": A cover of the 1958 cover (by The Kingston Trio) of a folk song recorded in 1927, filtered through the Wilson-on-drugs arranging machine. Carl's 12-string guitar part is a delight. The vocal harmonies are preposterously rich; this is one of the best examples of Wilson's gift in arranging relative banality into a religious experience. I love the glockenspiel. Mike chiming in with "This is the worst trip I've ever been on" at the end of a Brian verse cracks me up a little every time, especially given Mike's relative aversion to the drug scene at the time.

"God Only Knows": I wouldn't go to the extent of "THIS IS THE GREATEST SONG EVER" that so many would, but it's still pretty great. The accordion and horn introduction is glorious. Carl was the right choice to sing lead on this. The trio of Carl, Brian and Bruce Johnston was an unusual one for the band to deploy, but it works amazingly. The ending round was a brilliant idea.

"I Know There's an Answer": The lyrics to this are better than to the original version, "Hang On to Your Ego," which Mike refused to sing because "Hang On to Your Ego" is a pretty silly phrase to sing in a dramatic fashion (the lyrics here were written in collaboration with road manager Terry Sachen) and because it's too explicitly about drugs. The lyrics that ultimately made it on are (best as I can tell) about how people using too many drugs are living their lives incorrectly and the singer knows it but doesn't want to say anything because he had to figure it out himself (with the subtext still being that the "correct" way involved drugs in some way). The chorus (with a pounding tympani under it) is the most overblown moment on the album, and it's not totally deserved (this isn't "Love Reign O'er Me"), but I'll still sing along to it.

"Here Today": The melody and lyrics here (a look at the inevitable heartbreak that comes from falling in love with a girl, told from the perspective of the last guy to love her) could have belonged to a song from 1964, but the arrangement is way more complicated here than it would have been there. The prominent bass (which I was a little disappointed to learn wasn't played by Brian) in the verses, as well as the saxophones that pop up in the middle of each verse and in the chorus (not to mention the harpsichords underneath everything), would be enough to make a great arrangement on their own, but then the song goes into that lengthy instrumental break that begins with big chords and turns into something vaguely sounding like Bach crossed with circus music, and it goes up another level.

"I Just Wasn't Made For These Times": The out-of-tune harpsichord in the background, the chaotic wood block percussion (at least I assume those are wood blocks), the theramin at the end, the presence of backing vocals singing in Spanish, and who knows what else give an off-kilter feel to what would otherwise be a rather stately ballad, and the effect is terrific. After all, the song is about feeling out of place in one's environment, and it makes perfect sense for the details to try to create a subtlely disorienting effect. This is a really great song.

"Pet Sounds": Somehow, I could actually envision this working as the theme to a James Bond film like Brian wanted. The guitar and horns mix with the Latin-styled percussion (especially with the guiro) in a great manner. It's a lot more fun than "Let's Go Away for a While" is.

"Caroline No": Brian's voice on this is amazing; it's worth tracking down a track that just has his voice without any other instruments. The light harpsichord with bits of percussion in the background is the perfect minimalist accompaniment. The importance of the train sound at the end is exaggerated, but I don't mind it.

There's really no way for me to write a perfectly satisfactory review or summary of Pet Sounds; it's an album full of contradictions, such as all of the musical ambiguities crashing into oddly blunt lyrics, or the way the sad songs are so laced with happiness, or the way the happy songs are so laced with sadness, or so many other things. It's a long way from a perfect album, but many of those same features that keep me from considering it a perfect album are the same things that ultimately made me consider it a great album. In wrapping up, I'll say the following: I wish I had heard this album after I'd heard more early Beach Boys material, largely because so much of what makes this album interesting comes from the contrast of what this album does better than what the band had done previously, as well as the few things that the album does worse (for instance, the band's instrumental skills had never been great, but reducing them almost solely down to vocals provides a tension that works both for and against the album and ultimately makes it more interesting). Furthermore, the Pet Sounds vs Sgt. Pepper wars strike me as dumb; Paul McCartney may have been pushed to make Pepper better because of this one (just as Brian was pushed on this one by Rubber Soul), but the albums are nothing alike, aside from each having 13 tracks. Buy Today! before this, but treasure this album, especially since it's the last time we had a fully-functional Brian Wilson for a while.

Despite initial claims that the tapes for Smile had been destroyed, this quickly proved a lie, and by the 1980s, bootlegs of Smile material were a standard part of the collections of rock aficionados. The presence of so much raw material and the nebulous, undefined nature of how even the finished pieces would fit together added a tremendous amount of fun to the process of creating DIY Smile tapes; in a pre-internet age, they allowed collectors to engage in spirited debates concerning what material would have made it into the final product and in what order, and the best part was that there really was no wrong answer, since Brian himself really had no idea how the album would have come together. When I was in college, somebody sent me mp3s of an interpretation of how the tracks could potentially fit together, and it always cracked me up to read an accompanying note praising the included takes as "the very best available" and that "this is as close to a definitive Smile as one can find." For about a year, I listened to that Smile bootleg every bit as much as I listened to any other Beach Boys material.

Then, in 2004, Brian recorded and released an entirely new version of Smile to great acclaim, and while I adore that album and consider it no worse than Pet Sounds (an opinion I'll elaborate upon at length when I get to that album), this release also kinda ruined the fun of the Smile bootleg era; Brian's tracklisting might not have been remotely what he would have ended up using back in 1967, but it was a defined tracklisting nonetheless, and it became harder to make an argument for a significantly different one (even if arguments could still happen regarding which particular takes to use). At this point, the process of collecting Smile bootleg material turned primarily to collecting as many takes of different tracks as possible and comparing and contrasting them (though some hardcore fans kept the Smile track order holy wars going).

Eventually, the various powers-that-be decided that they should probably finally get around to collecting some of the material into a boxset along the lines of the Pet Sounds boxset they'd put together back in the 90s, and after a few delays the project was finally released in late 2011. The main feature is a "complete" version of Smile, modeled closely after Brian's 2004 version, and the rest of the set has various early takes and other assorted curiosities that would interest hardcore fans. I personally purchased the 2-CD version and found that a little excessive, but there's a 5-CD version out there that would probably make a lot of fans happy.

It's a bit of a misnomer to think of the provided reconstruction of Smile as Smile; the people putting this together did a terrific job with the material available to them, combining existing takes with demo versions to create the most authentic experience possible, but even with all of their efforts there are still many stretches where it's clear that I'm listening to a demo or to the backing track of a song that's meant to have vocals or some additional overdubs on top of it. This isn't an entirely bad thing; it just means that, rather than Capitol finally providing Smile, they instead provided an officially sanctioned Smile bootleg, which only seems like the right way for an official Smile release to go.

As mentioned, the Smile reconstruction here follows the model of the 2004 release, which was divided into three suites of tracks. I will not be going over the material in depth in this review; the tracks that later made it onto proper Beach Boys albums will be addressed there, and those aspects that are particular to the 2004 version will be discussed at that point. That said, it's useful to provide an overview of the album and to highlight some of the features of note. The first suite opens with "Our Prayer" and closes with "Cabin Essence," and aside from the glorious "Cabin Essence" the highlight is "Heroes and Villains," presented in a longer version than the better known Smiley Smile version (in particular the "In the cantina ..." section is restored). The second suite opens with "Wonderful" (lovely and graceful unlike the self-mockery on Smiley Smile), goes into early/unfinished versions of "Look (Song for Children)" and "Child is Father of the Man," and finishes with a version of "Surf's Up" that combines Brian's 1966 piano demo with aspects of the 1971 version (and thus has Brian on vocals except for a couple of spots that are filled in by Carl, with Al coming in for his portion at the end). The third suite opens with an early instrumental version of "I Wanna be Around" and the sound effects of "Workshop" before breaking into "Vega-Tables" (an actual finished version that sounds way better than the Smiley Smile version and features the amazing moment where "Mama Said" becomes the middle-8), with additional highlights in "Wind Chimes" (again, an actual finished version that blows away the Smiley Smile version), "The Elements (Mrs. O'Leary's Cow)" (very close to the 2004 version though without the strong mix of that one), "Love to Say Da Da" (an early version of what would become "In Blue Hawaii" and also featuring elements that would later make it on to "Cool, Cool Water"), and ending with "Good Vibrations," which is longer than the most famous version (the "hum-dee-dum ..." chanting section is restored). Overall, it's a very fun listen, even though I can ultimately only hear it as an early, unfinished version of an album I adore.

Among the rest of the provided material, there are only three tracks I've ever found myself wanting to hear again; a stereo mix of "Heroes and Villains," the amazing 1967 solo piano version of "Surf's Up" with Brian singing and playing, and the 1966 demo of "Surf's Up." Otherwise, there's a truckload of "work-in-progress" material on here, particularly focusing on "Heroes and Villains" and "Good Vibrations," with nods to other tracks thrown in for good measure.

Overall, while I don't quite consider this quite as great of an experience as I hoped it would (especially since I like Smile and so many aspects of it so much), I still consider this collection essential, and I have to imagine that anybody whose fandom of the band goes beyond the most narrowly-defined Mike Love-addled perception of the band would want to hear this. If I was grading this set based on the whole Smile experience and how much more interesting it's made the history of rock music, this would be a 10 for sure.

On the plus side, "Heroes and Villains" and "Good Vibrations" are awesome! "Heroes and Villains" was dismissed by Jimi Hendrix as "psychedelic barbershop" and didn't fit in at all with where the overall pop music scene was headed in the middle of 1967, but even in the relatively condensed form it takes on this album, the song is a multi-part wonder of extraordinary vocal harmonies, fun pop melodies and wacky sound effects. It could have been even grander (the recording history of the song is fascinating, and many stretches that were originally considered as possible portions of it ended up getting spun off into their own songs), but what's here is terrific. And "Good Vibrations," well, that's one of the best candidates I can think of for "best song of the 60s," even if I'm not sure that would be my final choice; it would be a nice enough pop song without all of the stuff packed into the mix (the results of combining days' worth of recorded material), but with all of the stuff packed into the mix, it becomes spectacular. I somewhat prefer the lyrics that made it on to Brian's 2004 version (the original lyrics that tied in better to the main theme of the song), but I understand why Mike didn't want "..And she's already working on my brain" on a major Beach Boys single, and the lyrics are ultimately just fine. Oh, and I miss the "hum-dee-dum ..." section here, but that part is restored on the Smile Sessions, and I'm able to enjoy the song plenty without it.

I get annoyed listening to the rest. The reworkings of Smile material here irritate me a lot and leave me wishing there was some way they could have just not bothered. "Vegetables" isn't harmed too badly, I suppose, though I miss the "Sleep a lot, eat a lot ..." coda quite a bit; it's basically a rushed, abridged version of the Smile version, with a bit more emphasis on the carrot-chomping percussion and the odd inclusion of what I'm pretty sure is somebody blowing on a jug, but it's not bad. "Wind Chimes," though, makes me pretty mad; it was so pretty and hypnotic in its original incarnation, but here the band makes an odd attempt to make it sound spooky (through harsh whispered vocals and various out-of-place additions), and the resulting version stinks. Just as bad is what happens to "Wonderful," which removes the incredibly lovely arrangement of the original and replaces with the musical equivalent of armpit noises, and I just can't get behind this total mockery of one of Brian's best songs; the fact that Carl still basically sings the same vocal melody as before, amongst the chaos, really lends to the self-mockery feel of it. Elsewhere, the more intense portions of "Elements" are dumped into the background of "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony)," whose main feature is a squeeze box imitating Woody the Woodpecker, and I've never liked this at all.

Some lesser known Smile-era material is also reworked (these are pieces that didn't make the cut for Brian's 2004 version or the main chunk of The Smile Sessions); "He Gives Speeches" returns as "She's Going Bald," which starts off as a fun lo-fi song about a woman losing her hair (though Dennis Wilson apparently thought it was about oral sex because sure why not), but when the song turns into messing with vocal pitch for its own sake (before in turn going into a mock-vaudeville dramatic section) it loses me. "With Me Tonight" (which started as just a chant section) is a pretty decent bit of minimalist doo-wop, and it would probably be my favorite thing on this album if it weren't for the giants. The other three tracks, then, are post-Smile creations, and they're not so great. "Little Pad" is a barely passable collage of Hawaii-centric ideas that may as well be called "We Have Your Money Now And You're Not Getting It Back," "Gettin' Hungry" is mildly interesting when the organ is featured and not interesting when it's not, and the closing "Whistle In" is a nice snippet of a lead Carl vocal over piano and quiet backing vocals that I wish had been developed into an actual song.

While this album had a minimal commercial impact (honestly, Capitol should have been thrilled that it had any commercial impact at all), it ended up garnering a surprising amount of praise from contemporary and future artists, who found intrigue in the notion of a band like The Beach Boys going for such a minimalist sound (even if the reasons for the lo-fi sound were hardly ones to try to emulate). I concede that, if Smile didn't exist in any form, and the band had somehow created this album through entirely intentional means, then I might be able to convince myself of this album's daring and revolutionary bravado, and that might be enough for me to boost the grade a little even if I still didn't enjoy listening to it. Unfortunately, Smile (the project more than any form of the album) exists, I know Smile exists, I know better versions of Smile material than what's on here exist, I know that they could have made a better album than this from existing material, and I know that the band members just wanted to get an album out as soon as they could and move on to something completely different. And thus ended the first large-scale era of the band's life, not with a bang but with a whimper. I have this on a two-fer with (the far superior) Wild Honey, so I don't mind owning it, but if I didn't have Smiley Smile in this form I'd just get "Heroes and Villains" and "Good Vibrations" on a compilation.

If your familiarity with the band doesn't extended beyond Pet Sounds and/or a Greatest Hits compilation, this album may sound very jarring, and if you love the band based on its earlier sound there's no guarantee you'll like this (though, on the flip side, if you don't especially care for the earlier stuff you might find this intriguing). The biggest change in approach concerns the vocals; the angelic group harmonies of yesteryear are basically gone, largely replaced with a lot of solo singing (with Carl assuming a role equal to and sometimes surpassing Brian and Mike), and when multiple people are singing together the sound is much rougher than it had tended towards previously. In terms of instrumentation and overall approach, it's very lo-fi, but it's lo-fi in a different way from Smiley Smile; whereas that album, at its worst, sounded incredibly half-assed, this album seems to be governed by a very deliberate "don't overthink it" mentality, both in terms of the instrumentation and the song lengths. Much of the instrumentation largely reminds me of the various Smile demos, with a distant sounding barroom piano often serving as the primary instrument (while Brian or somebody else sings over it), and aside from some theramin, the album is working primarily in a guitar/bass/drums setup (though not really playing anything akin to its older self or the Chuck Berry licks they'd so often used as a crutch). In regards to the song lengths, well, you don't have an 11 track album last 24 minutes if you're padding things out; the band probably underplays the potential of a lot of these songs by not letting them develop to their fullest extent, but the upside of this approach is to ensure that there's very little on the album that could be called fluff. My guess is that Mike (and probably others) wanted to make sure that the band didn't fall into the trap of reworking ideas so much that they never actually produced something they could release, and thus they went to the other extreme of stopping work on a given song as soon as they'd reached an acceptable threshold of "finished" for that song.

In terms of highlights, my favorite tracks on the album have long been the two main singles (neither of which charted especially well), namely the opening title track and "Darlin'." The title track immediately makes the band feel more alive than anything on Smiley Smile (outside the two big highlights, obviously), with Carl nearly screeching the sexually charged (under the cover of metaphor, but come on) lyrics over a foundation of theramin, piano, bongos (among the other drums), and a goofy organ solo in the middle. "Darlin'" (also sung by Carl) has its roots in another song the band had given away (and produced) in 1964 ("Thinkin' 'Bout You Baby" sung by Sharon Marie), but while it may have come from long in the past, it has always sounded to me more like a 70s song than anything the band did in the 60s. Something about the combination of the horns, Carl's vocals and the glorious vocal melody has long made me draw associations with 70s sitcoms, and that's not an insult; I find it a lot of fun to hear the band somehow predicting such a random aspect of future pop culture, and this would have been one of the greatest 70s sitcom songs ever written.

The rest of the album, on the whole, is just about as memorable and impressive as these two tracks are. "Aren't You Glad" is another great simple tune based around Brian banging away on piano, with horns fleshing out the sound as Brian, Mike and Carl trade vocals, and when it fades out I'm sad to see it go. The band's cover of Stevie Wonder's "I Was Made to Love Her" (which had come out just a few months earlier) may upset people who are against white people covering soul songs in general, but Carl does fine a job panting out the lyrics over the piano and drums (and the nagging "Yes I was made to love her" backing vocals). "Country Air" sounds exactly like a Smile outtake, with decent group harmonizing (possibly the best on the album) over more raw piano that occasionally gives way to atmospheric static, and it sounds better than a lot of the actual Smile outtake material. Closing out the first side is "A Thing or Two," which has always fascinated me for its lumbering attempts at "rocking out" in the "Do right baby/out of sight baby" parts, especially given that those parts entertain me more than they reasonably should (the awkward horny vocals on top of it are actually a perfect compliment to the music). Also, the contrast between those parts and the softer guitar-driven music hall-style bits cracks me up every time I listen to the song.

On the second half, "Darlin'" is immediately followed by two songs with Brian as the sole lead vocalist (the only two on the album), followed by three songs that return to making use of the whole group. "I'd Love Just Once to See You" comes within a hair of being a third "favorite song" choice for me from this album; the tune is just so snappy and memorable, the underpinning acoustic guitar parts are so crisp and clear, the rambling lyrics are so charming (I always smirk at "When's the last time you made me a pie?"), the harmonies are so Kinks-ish, and the final culmination is such a crackup ("I'd love just once to see you/I'd love just once to see you/I'd love just once to see you in the nude") that I can completely forgive the song only lasting 1:50. "Here Comes the Night" is another great mix of barroom piano and occasional organ outbursts, with another great mix of a memorable and clear verse melody crossed with a chorus full of "That chord doesn't belong there" moments. "Let the Wind Blow" slams the barroom piano and rough vocal harmonies of the rest of the album into a 3/4 time signature (the first time the band had used this for an entire song) and emerges as a glorious burst of atmospherics. "How She Boogalooed It" is possibly a slight misstep; it's a somewhat banal old-timey Carl-sung "rocker," created and recorded entirely without Brian (the first time the band had done that on a song with lyrics), and if it's fun (especially when the organ appears) it's also a bit of a letdown after the nearly immaculate string of tracks right before it. And finally, "Mama Says" takes the original "Eat a lot/Sleep a lot/Brush 'em like crazy..." middle 8 of "Vegetables" (from before the track was mangled for inclusion on Smiley Smile), extends it out with a few rhythmic variations, and somehow extracts 1:08 out of it (another 10 seconds would have been too much, honestly, so I'm glad it ended when it did).

Aside from the small dip at the end, this album is nearly perfect relative to what it tries to accomplish, and part of me feels like it might deserve an even higher grade. Then again, 24 minutes is really short even by Beach Boys standards, and even if the first 20 minutes of that is nearly perfect, any reasonable attempt I make to slot this into my overall hierarchy has to account for this relative dearth of material. Still, I wouldn't want to go far in regards to downgrading this; this album essentially saved their career, if not commercially then artistically, and whenever a track from this album appears in my occasional iPod shufflings at work, a big smile and a happy feeling is sure to follow. If you're curious about post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys, this album is a must.

Time heals all wounds, however, and many of the aspects of the album that doomed its appeal back in 1968 have allowed this to grow into an album with a pretty strong cult following. Aside from the closing "Transcendental Meditation," an ill-conceived attempt at a noisy rocker that knocks the album down a grade, this album is mellow and subtle to an almost shocking degree, and nothing on here would have worked on here as a potential hit single or a clear future inclusion for compilations or live performances (though "Wake the World" did get a rendition on Live in London). While none of the material clearly jumps out as a classic, though, the album is jam-packed with inventive melodies, some courtesy of Brian but others courtesy of other band members. Even the opening "Meant For You," where it seems like Mike is trying to invite the listeners to join a cult (it should be mentioned that he'd gotten heavily into meditation and had studied under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for a little while), has a much more resonant vocal melody in its 40 seconds than one could reasonably expect from a song with production and arrangements this low key. The next four songs on side one (the title track, "Wake the World," "Be Here in the Mornin," "When a Man Needs a Woman") all feature writing credits from Brian, but they also all have credits from Al Jardine (remember him?), and Carl gets credit on three while Dennis gets credit on two. I don't want to give the sense that these songs are all cut from the same cloth, or that they're at all unenjoyable, but they're all so short (their total length is shorter than "Roundabout") and similar in vibe that they tend to blend together in my mind when I'm not actively listening to the album. "When a Man Needs a Woman" is somewhat notable for being a sort of lullaby to Brian's daughter Carnie (in the womb at the time), but just like the other songs on this side it sounds completely effortless (mostly in the good sense of the term, only slightly in the bad). Oh, and I guess "Be Here in the Mornin'" has some screwy aspects popping up here and there among the low-key baseline of the song.

A welcome change comes at the end of the first half, courtesy of "Passing By," where the typically minimalist arrangement (with a great organ break popping up a couple of times) is accompanied by wordless harmonizing (courtesy of Brian, Carl and Al); with words, it might have just blended in with all of the other songs in the first half, but by taking this approach the song ends up having a more striking atmospheric aspect than anything else on the first half. This track also kicks off a stretch where the album gains at least a little more in the way of variety, and this helps the album quite a bit. "Anna Lee, The Healer," an Mike-penned ode, to, well, a healing woman named Anna Lee (I guess he met her in India?), has some of the album's silliest lyrics, but the bouncy melody is fun, and the quiet-but-intricate vocal harmonies are reminiscient of the band at its very best. The next two tracks are Dennis' first contributions to the band as primary writer (he's also the singer on these), and while they're short, they're no less impressive than anything else on the album; "Little Bird" alternates well between Dennis' weary vocals and some adventurous use of the band's vocal capabilities (that is, the vocals on this song always sound like The Beach Boys, and they sound good, but they never sound like Stereotypical Beach Boys), and "Be Still" is just a minute or so of Dennis singing solo over a keyboard, to much greater emotional effect than one might expect given the simplicity of the song and the roughness of his voice.

Aside from "Transcendental Meditation," the album rounds out with two very different tracks. "Busy Doin' Nothin'" is a bossa nova that's basically about Brian puttering around, and the song's very existance (especially the part where he rambles on how he remembers somebody's phone number) gives a fascinating look into his life; only somebody with tremendous talent could write a song as perfectly constructed and memorable as this, and only somebody in an odd mental place would actually do so. Finally, "Diamond Head" is another instrumental, this time sounding much more in the Smile vein, where ocean sound effects are crossed with Hawaiian-vibed guitar and keyboard music (and with really fun drumming), and where they somehow manage to squeeze three minutes out of this in a way that is not only not tiresome but is actually pretty hypnotic.

Friends will never be one of my very favorite Beach Boys albums, but it's definitely an interesting one, and I can easily see why it would provoke such strong responses among its defenders. For a band that was falling apart internally to make an album this sonically cohesive and this peaceful is fascinating to me, and I don't think I'll ever totally wrap my head around it (it should be noted that both Mark Prindle and Capn' Marvel basically said that this album is basically the soundtrack to getting brainwashed by a cult, and while I'm not sure I entirely agree with this I admit the case for this is strong). As with all albums in the '67-'73 period of the band, I consider it a nice inclusion to the band's catalogue.

I will say this; the backing tracks, especially of everything from 1965 onward, do a great job of showing that the band's success didn't just come from the incredible singing, but also from intricate arrangements, which made a habit of gradually layering and unlayering instruments in striking ways, and which offered a chance for the band to make some fascinating choices in terms of chords. It's great fun, for instance, to hear how the band slowly ramps up the instrumental intensity of "Sloop John B," or to hear clearly (with the vocals stripped away) the startling key change near the beginning of "Wouldn't it be Nice," or a few other similar examples outside of Pet Sounds. That said, I don't want to go too far in defense of this album. One thing that's somewhat embarrassing, though largely unavoidable, is that they couldn't entirely strip out the vocals on the earlier songs; "Catch a Wave" is the most egregious example of not being able to eliminate the vocals out of one of the channels, and the fact that the vocals still somewhat remain kinda undermines the purpose of the album.

The wisest course might have been to make the album chronological, in order to showcase the gradual increase in the complexity of the band's arrangements, but unfortunately Capitol didn't do so; it's unsettling, for instance, to jump from "Catch a Wave" to "Wild Honey" to "Little Saint Nick" to "Do it Again" (a recent single that would later lead off 20/20). In any case, this obviously isn't a bad album (all of the included songs on here were fine or better in their original incarnation), and it's worth a listen or two, but it's only worth a listen or two, and it's one of the least necessary albums I can imagine.

Amidst all of the turmoil of this era, the band still needed to cobble together an album, and if somebody believes that an album from this hellish period (this was released in February 1969) would inevitably be second rate, they could make a convincing argument based on the choice of material. Brian's total contributions amount to the following: a co-credit with Mike on a single from July 1968 ("Do it Again"); a co-credit with Carl on song recorded just after the Friends session that sounds exactly like the bulk of Brian's contributions to that album ("I Went to Sleep"); a reworked leftover from the Wild Honey sessions ("Time to Get Alone"); and two of the finished Smile tracks, because hey, they were sitting around and they may as well finally release them ("Our Prayer" and "Cabinessence"). In this situation, the other members of the band had to up their contributions considerably even from Friends, and this increase in emphasis on other members (who, let's face it, had always been Brian's second bananas to this point) and massive decrease in emphasis on Brian leads to the album having a different feel to it than anything the band had previously released. The album also contains three covers among its twelve tracks, four if you count the unacknowledged Manson contribution (which is credited to Dennis), and the argument could be made that this also somewhat dilutes the "purity" of this Beach Boys release even further.

I agree that the relative lack of Brian Wilson and all of the competing artistic voices leads to this album sounding less like a Beach Boys album than any the band had yet done (apart from possibly Smiley Smile), and for somebody who feels especially close kinship with Brian Wilson this may end up sounding like the work of imposters. Well, while I can understand this reaction, I also can't agree with it; this album was the first Beach Boys album other than Pet Sounds that really clicked with me, and all of these competing voices that might bother somebody who especially likes the "thematic unity" of Pet Sounds appealed strongly to me as somebody whose late 60s favorites were still bands like The Beatles and The Moody Blues. Maybe a lot of these tracks fall outside of what I'd consider the top tier of Beach Boys material, but those tracks all fall solidly in the second tier, and the variety between them is enough to give the album a high-quality messiness that I find appealing.

The first half of the album only has Brian input on the opening "Do it Again," but it's a delightful half nonetheless. Regarding "Do it Again," I liked this song before I liked any of the band's earlier surf-themed tracks that this track stylistically updates, and part of that is due to how impressed I am at how the band eagerly embraces a modern, almost "futurist" sound. I mean, I don't want to go too nuts and definitively compare the opening drum effect to something from, say, Low, but for something from 1969, is that comparison really that far off? Anyway, the song itself is grand, with Mike sounding happier than a pig in slop to be back to singing about his favorite topic of years gone by, and the slow layering of arrangements, culminating in those glorious intricate harmonies (with Brian on falsetto), shows the band holding on to all of the lessons it had learned on how to make great sounding pop music in the previous few years. Carl's gentle vocal break in the middle is terrific as well.

Up next are two covers, one of which is nearly perfect, and one of which is fine but with a pretty clear defect. "I Can Hear Music" (a cover of the Phil Spector song, originally performed by The Ronettes in 1966) is Carl's main vocal showcase on the album, with particularly amazing vocal harmonies (seriously, this is the best set of Beach Boys harmonies since Pet Sounds) and a fantastic (mostly) a capella break that all do justice to a nearly perfect song. "Bluebirds Over the Mountain," then, is Mike, Carl, and Bruce Johnston (yup, they brought him out of storage for this album) covering an old Ersel Hickey rockabilly song, with some horn support, and it's a nice dose of lighthearted fun ... which is inexplicably afflicted by tour guitarist Ed Carter trying his best to turn the song into a hard rock song with squealing licks that don't belong at all. I guess they wanted to stretch themselves and try something different, which I respect, but the execution wasn't great this time around.

Rounding out the side are two Dennis songs and a Bruce Johnston (!!) instrumental (!!!), and they're all good. "Be With Me" expands on the promise of Dennis' contributions to Friends with a tense horn-and-string-laden ballad (the string arrangements in this one are much more adventurous than one would expect from somebody like Dennis who was doing this scale of production for the first time) that manages to wrench a tremendous amount of emotion out of the limited technical faculties of Dennis' voice, and if it's not a masterpiece it's not terribly far off. The other Dennis song in this group is pretty much the opposite in style, a Love-sung hard rocker called "All I Want to Do," and while the idea of The Beach Boys doing a piano-heavy hard rocker with Love on lead vocals sounds like it's doomed to fail, it's actually surprisingly solid. The guitar tone is great, Mike actually sounds shockingly passable singing this kind of music, and the most controversial aspect of the song (the sex noises in the background) is mixed so low that you probably won't hear them unless you're actively looking for them. Maybe this song somehow betrays the idea of what The Beach Boys are "supposed" to sound like but I have no problem with it. And finally, Bruce's instrumental ("The Nearest Faraway Place") is jumping out of its skin to capture the same vibe as Brian's instrumentals from Pet Sounds and Summer Days, and while it's not the greatest thing in the world, it's fully competent and works well as a calming lurch after the fury of "All I Want to Do."

Flipping over to the second half, things kick off with a Jardine-sung cover of "Cotton Fields," which is done in a gentler manner (and less explicitly rootsy) than the CCR cover of the same song, and Al gives it a better reading than anybody else in the band probably would have. Up next, then, are two Brian songs, and if anything these somewhat slow down the momentum of the album. "I Went to Sleep," as previously mentioned, sounds exactly like one of Brian's Friends tracks, with Brian describing in mundane detail some aspect of his daily life over a simple decent melody accompanied by light drumming and a flute (which may be mellotron, I can't tell), all done with decent harmonies. "Time to Get Alone" is somewhat better, with Carl taking lead in a Carl/Brian/Al vocal trio over a waltz accompanied by various keyboards and some strings, and it's interesting to me how much more Carl sounds like he's in a group like The Zombies than in The Beach Boys.

The last three tracks are each notorious for their own reasons. "Never Learn Not to Love" started life as a Charles Manson blues-rock number called "Cease to Exist," and while Dennis decided to preserve the bulk of the melody, he changed the song enough (lyrics included) that he felt comfortable releasing it with credits given solely to himself (which did not make Manson happy). Aside from the ominous backwards cymbal introduction, the song is basically a fairly standard pop song with a strong "I'm your kind, I'm your kind, and I see" hook sung by Dennis' strained vocals and some nice backing vocals from Carl, and while it's not a highlight it's not a lowlight either. The other two, then, marked the first proper inclusions of Smile material since those sessions had collapsed, and they were the first tracks to give a proper hint of what the album could have been. "Our Prayer" is a spectacular minute-long exercise in wordless harmonizing, showing the full potential of the band's vocals even when divorced from actual lyrics, and it would have made a terrific opening to Smile (as it was intended to be). And finally, "Cabinessence" would certainly have been a highlight of the finished Smile; the lyrics created some tension during the recording process (they're very abstract and surreal in spots, even if they have their roots in the tangible topic of Chinese railroad workers), but they tap into the same sort of mystical power that Yes lyrics do at their best (yeah I went there), and the music itself is incredible, both in terms of instrumentation and in the deployment of the vocals. The "Home on the Range" portion sets the Western scene exquisitely, largely thanks to the banjo and harmonica parts, but also because of Carl's great vocals; the "Who Ran the Iron Horse" portion is a bewildering rush of overdriven bass and high harmonies over a nagging up-tempo waltz (!) with the emphasis of the phrase falling in an odd place each time (and with a quietly mixed Dennis rap tucked behind the second iteration); and "The Grand Coulee Dam" builds from a fascinating layering of vocals into a nearly orgasmic chanting of a sorta nonsensical phrase (which becomes less nonsensical with a little rearranging) as other elements from earlier in the song slowly creep back into the mix. All of this happens, by the way, in a mere 3:35, when it feels like this mix of ideas should be able to sustain a song for at least 6 minutes.

This isn't quite a great album; even if it's a good deal longer than Wild Honey or Friends it's still less than 30 minutes long, and there's a little more sag here than on the mostly immaculate (just excessively short) Wild Honey. And yet, even if it's not a great album, it's as clear of a very good album as I could imagine, full of strong melodies and full of variety of both the stylistic and emotional kind. Kudos to the band for making the best of an awful situation.

As the dust settled on the band's implosion as an act that could sell new studio albums in the US (things were still going alright in the UK but it was all over for them in the states), it became clear that the only way for the band to make money for the forseeable future was to become a viable live act again. Aside from the planned tour earlier in 1968 (which, as mentioned previously, was cut short and left the band in a bad financial state), the group had become reclusive in recent years for various reasons (most of which were covered already), and if they were going to cut it as a live act in 1968 and beyond they couldn't sound like they had in 1965 and earlier. Even if they couldn't replicate their studio material exactly, they had to be able to make a worthy attempt at it, and this meant not only a slightly higher level of technical acumen than they'd displayed on Concert but also a fuller sound in general. To this end, the live version of the band now contained a horn section and a supplementary guitarist, in addition to Bruce Johnston functioning as the Brian proxy (as he had when Brian had retired from touring a few years earlier).

The album is a relatively brief affair, consisting of 12 tracks lasting less than 35 minutes, and it mostly features material from 1966 onward, with a couple of older covers thrown in for good measure. The post-Smile material is performed with great aplomb, and it's a treat to hear the band captured in this moment in time, when the band was getting older but wasn't yet so old that they could get by solely on nostalgia. Wild Honey is represented by the opening "Darlin'" (which had been a successful single for them) and "Aren't You Glad" (which hadn't been a single but I'm glad that they were still trying to promote Wild Honey on the whole; there's a hilarious moment when it sounds like only one person cheers when Mike announces they're going to do something off of Wild Honey), Friends is represented by "Wake the World" (the album had been much more successful in the UK than the US, after all), and 20/20 is represented by "Do it Again" (which makes no attempt to replicate the cool drum effect of the original but still sounds delightful) and "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" (which tones down the out-of-place hard rock licks a little bit in favor of something a little more bluesy), both of which were pre-album singles at the time. Pet Sounds is represented about how you'd expect it to be, with "Wouldn't be Nice," "Sloop John B" and "God Only Knows," all of which sound less immaculate than in the originals but still sound lovely, and it's fun to hear the band working its collective tail off to make sure that nobody comes away disappointed in how they sound. Rounding out the hits are "California Girls," "Good Vibrations" (where the band does a great job of replicating the overall feel of the song if not necessarily all of the details), and the closing "Barbara Ann," all of which function as perfectly acceptable alternate versions.

A delightful surprise comes in the middle when the band performs an a-capella rendition of "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring," which the band had done with different lyrics on Little Deuce Coupe (as "A Young Man is Gone") and which the band had regularly performed live since the earliest days. There's something oddly touching about this performance beyond the technically immaculate harmonies; I find something symbolic in the way that, regardless of how much turmoil the band had gone through, regardless of how long people's beards had gotten, and regardless of all of the extra musicians helping things out, the band was still ultimately the same at its core, and it was still a band whose greatest strengths came from just how incredible their voices sounded together. This may not be the best song included in the setlist, but to me it's easily the most essential performance of the album.

This is hardly an essential inclusion to the band's career, but it's still rather nice, and I would recommend it to anybody who really likes this era of studio albums from the band. It should be noted again that this is most easily obtained as a two-fer with the earlier Concert, and it's quite an interesting experience to listen to these back to back and hear how much the band had to change in less than five years. Of course, they don't change completely, as evidenced by the stage banter; Mike Love was a cornball in 1964, and he was a cornball in 1968, and he'd be a cornball forever and ever.

If I had to guess why the album flopped as badly as it did, I'd probably start with the first advance single for the album, "Add Some Music to Your Day," which did moderately well chart-wise but largely misrepresents the kind of music the band was shooting for overall at the time. There are some salvagable bits from the song (I like the "Music is in my soul" delivery quite a bit), but it's so soft and neutered and so eager to represent the band as a relic of the pre-'65 era that I just can't really enjoy it, and I have to imagine that the idea of an entire album of music like this didn't appeal to that many people. This song previews the band's eventual descent into retro kitsch (not so much in style but in a forced tone of innocence) in a terrifying way, and I'm glad that neither this album nor the next few would have anything else quite like this.

Indeed, while "Add Some Music To Your Day" presented the band as retro kitsch, the remainder of the album presents the band as one that is aware of its established strengths but is also aware of the passing of time and the world changing around them, and to the extent that the album sounds like a Beach Boys album it also most definitely sounds like what I'd hope for from a 70's Beach Boys album. The album's biggest star, once again, is Dennis, and it's fitting that he's responsible both for the album's opening song and for its most iconic one. The opening "Slip On Through" is a longtime favorite of mine, a tense and low-key (but really off-kilter in terms of the backing arrangements) number in the verses that bursts into a chorus that features Dennis crashing through his vocal "limitations" in a great IDGAF manner, all in the span of about 2:20. His most iconic contribution to the album is the ballad "Forever," featuring his lovelist vocal performance ever, incredibly rousing backing vocals (not in exactly the same way as in the band's classic period, but rousing all the same), and with a great throwback section tucked in the middle with the "Baby just let me sing it my baby ..." part. Regarding his other two songs, "Got to Know the Woman" is a somewhat pedestrian piano-based "rocker," but "It's About Time" (sung by Carl, who does a great job with it) is a great bongo/horn/other things rock that taps into a "soundtrack for a chase scene from a 70s cop movie" vibe that the band didn't really bother with much otherwise.

While this album marks the peak of Dennis' contributions to the band, it also features somewhat of a comeback from Brian, who hadn't contributed a lot to 20/20 aside from the leftovers (albeit great leftovers) from Smile. My absolute favorite of his contributions here is the gorgeous "All I Wanna Do," a collaboration with Mike (with Mike taking lead vocals) that sounds otherworldly in a way that was hardly typical for the band (and hardly typical for anybody back in 1970). The sound is very shmeary in the way that a great impressionist painting is shmeary; the guitar is echoey and dreamy, the bass is more of a presence than an instrument, Mike's vocal is subdued but pointed, and the "My life is burning brightly/black moon and stars shine nightly" backing vocals from Brian are endlessly hypnotic. The other Brian/Mike contribution is "Cool, Cool Water," which incorporates a chant section from "Love to Say Dada" (from the Smile sessions) into a mix of ideas that might be directionless from a certain perspective but that fit the water theme perfectly, and it makes for a great way to end the album.

Brian's lone solo contribution is "This Whole World," in which Carl takes most of the lead vocals, and aside from "Cool, Cool Water" it features the album's most impressive exercise in updating the band's vocal approach of the 60s into its more contemporary ambitions. Aside from this, Wilson has a nice collaboration with Bruce Johnston ("Deirdre," in which Johnston does a nice job of singing a bouncy melody that always makes me think of strolling near French cafes on a sunny day), an awfully lovely collaboration with Carl and Al ("Our Sweet Love," in which Carl sings another great melody over a tasteful string arrangement that I originally mistook for a mellotron), and a possibly overly cutesy collaboration with Al that I eventually came to enjoy ("At My Window," sung primarily by Bruce, which appears to be about watching a hummingbird, and which I'm almost positive does contain a mellotron unless those really are flutes). No, Brian's not quite back at Pet Sounds level with this material, but this is about as close as he could get at this point.

The album rounds out with a Johnston-penned number ("Tears in the Morning") that suggests that maybe a little Johnston went a long way, but while I'm not especially thrilled with it (though the long quiet piano outro is a nice touch), it doesn't impact my feelings toward the album that much. In terms of grade, I waffled between a B and a C about a dozen times, and while I ultimately settled on the greater of the two, I don't totally feel great about it, and it's definitely less secure in its grade than is Wild Honey (which is much shorter but whose awesome-per-second density is definitely better). Still, that type of waffling is somewhat irrelevant in the greater scheme of things; what's most important to me is that the band had once again managed to face down tremendous adversity and emerge triumphant, in circumstances that would have left most bands stumbling about to make something half as decent as this. The two-fer with this and Surf's Up is an essential purchase for anybody who likes The Beach Boys but hasn't yet gone beyond their 60s work.

By this point, the band had been in a democratic mode for some time, but the distribution of contributions is not the same as before, and thus Surf's Up has a decidedly different feel even from Sunflower. After contributing to 7 out of 12 tracks on Sunflower, Brian is down to 4 out of 10 tracks here, and one of those (the title track) had originated in the earliest days of the Smile project (and aside from a co-writing credit in the first half of the album, all of his contributions are pushed to the end). Just as conspicuous is the complete lack of any contributions from Dennis; he had written a couple of songs ("4th of July," "(Wouldn't it be Nice to) Live Again") in the sessions, and while the former wasn't especially remarkable (it's a fairly rambling protest song about Vietnam), the latter was a fairly spectacular ballad (seriously: go look it up on Youtube right now) that Dennis strongly wanted to close out the album, and when Carl wouldn't budge on the title track closing out the album, Dennis wouldn't allow the song onto the final album. This is a shame: if this song could have just closed out the first side instead of "Student Demonstration Time" then I'd bump this album's rating up two points easily. Anyway, with Brian and Dennis not taking on the load that had come to them over the last few albums, the responsibility for making a good album fell on the others, and between them they came up with seven tracks of material that has some odd low points but also some incredibly high ones.

Indeed, there was a time when I would almost never listen to Surf's Up aside from the Brian-centric chunk at the end, but eventually I became quite fond of this material. In retrospect, there can be no doubt that my feelings towards this half were disproportionately affected by my disdain for "Student Demonstration Time," where Mike decided to approach the "write something with a social conscience" suggestion by taking the older Leiber and Stoller song, "Riot in Cell Block Number 9," and rewriting the lyrics to cover various unfortunate events from the previous few years (such as the Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings in May 1970). The song absolutely does not work; the hardened guitar tone sounds completely out of place with the old-timey rock licks, and all of the various sound effects (in the background, as well as the effects on Mike's voice) just give me a headache.

The other six songs in this stretch (four in the first half, two starting off the second) are really good on the whole. "Take a Load Off Your Feet" (a collaboration between Brian and Al that had originated when the band was working on what would become Sunflower) is a little silly and novelty-ish (with gimmicky percussion and sped-up vocals about different ways to take care of your feet), but I never feel an urge to skip it, and it gives some levity to an album that otherwise doesn't have much of it. Al's other contribution to the first half (in collaboration with Mike) might also seem somewhat of a novelty piece at first, but I've found that my appreciation for the opening "Don't Go Near the Water" has only grown through the years. It's definitely startling to hear the band suddenly switching so blatantly into singing about serious matters like ecology, but the song is really quite perfect for these two; after all, their impact on pop culture at large had initially been tied to the image of surfing, so it makes sense that, when they'd write a song about something of greater seriousness, it would be about something interfering with their ability to enjoy surfing (in this case, all of the various poisons and garbage making their way into the water supply). The vocals are done in such a way as to make it instantly clear that they are from The Beach Boys (with all sorts of trademarked gimmicks thrown in), but there are clear deviations from tradition as well, and the song is ultimately a lot of fun.

The other two songs are top-notch, with one great contribution from Carl ("Long Promised Road") and one great contribution from Bruce ("Disney Girls (1957)"). "Long Promised Road" is the first full-fledged song that Carl ever wrote for the band, and it's an impressive one, not least of which because he also plays all of the instruments in addition to providing all of the vocals, including the backing ones. The build from a quiet keyboard-heavy ballad in the verses to an ecstatic chorus is an absolute joy, and the atmospheric organ part in the middle is bliss; the song is full of pent-up emotion spilling out, and the arrangements play it up well. "Disney Girls (1957)" could be and should be cutesy schlock, but the melody is so good that it instead becomes a highlight, with Bruce spinning an ode of childhood innocence, looking forward to one's future life, then growing up and looking forward to a new future while also looking back to childhood innocence. This is definitely Bruce's best moment with the band.

While the first half bounces between highs and lows, the second half is nothing but highs, varying only in magnitude. "Feel Flows" is Carl working by himself again (with a couple of session musicians chipping in), this time in service of a 5-minute mini-epic full of weirdly echoed vocals, active flutes and sax (not from Carl), and a very elaborate (not blazing, but definitely carefully constructed) fuzz guitar solo that shows Carl had been working on his craft. "Lookin' At Tomorrow (Welfare Song)" is a very short protest song (given an otherworldly vibe in the production) from Al that's padded out to get it up to two minutes, but the manner of padding it out strikes me as somewhat ingenious; Al finds a way to take wordless vocal sounds (the likes of which he had probably used in the background of dozens of Beach Boys songs) and make them creepier in this context than they would ever have been elsewhere, before the regular song returns to wrap things up. Great stuff!

Finally, after all of this, we come to the Brian section, which even now I've probably listened to five times as often as the rest of the album. I originally had no idea that "A Day in the Life of a Tree" was sung by Rieley himself (he was basically tricked into singing the master take when Brian pretended to not know how to approach it); I just initially assumed Brian was incredibly ill when singing this and the band had included this take for some weird reason. Anyway, the rougher vocal works terrifically in contrast to the blaring harmonium, and all of the various elements (the backing vocals from Al Jardine and Van Dyke Parks, the sound effects, the convoluted chord sequences) come together well to amplify the lyrics (about a tree that slowly succumbs to death due to the worsening world around it). The album then turns from the somber and depressing in an ecological sense to the somber and depressing in a personal sense, with everybody coming together to help make Brian's borderline suicidal dirge "Til I Die" one of the band's classics of the era. The whole song builds on the vibe of the opening line, "I'm a cork on the ocean," giving the sense of somebody completely aware that they're not in control of their life (as Brian was not), and the cross of the thick vocal harmonies, the blaring keyboards and the minimal accompaniment otherwise, make this one of the most enjoyable songs I can think of that also comes within a stone's throw of a snuff tape.

For all of the good material on this album, though, it's ultimately the title track that brings this album its greatest fame. The track had achieved nearly mythical proportions among Beach Boys fans prior to this point, since it had received public performance (in an early form) as early as 1967, and Brian wanted nothing to do with it by 1971 largely for this reason; not only did he want nothing to do with anything from the Smile disaster, but there was little chance he could produce something that would live up to the idea of the track in the minds of those who still cared about it, and thus there was little to be gained by producing an actual version for release. Rieley and the band had asked Brian if he would let them put the song on the album, and at first Brian refused, but then out of nowhere he consented, and the band went to work on creating a definitive version of the piece. The version that made it onto the album preserves elements of the 1966 versions, but adds additional instrumentation and vocals as needed (which is through most of the song). The first section features Carl on vocals (hitting some incredible bits of falsetto); the second section uses Brian's vocals and piano part from the original version; and the third section has Al singing some new lyrics over a coda based on the "Child is the Father of the Man" ideas that had never been finalized during the Smile Sessions. The lyrics, of course, are not Brian's; they're from Van Dyke Parks, and they're every bit as atmospheric and inscrutable as, say, the lyrics on "Cabinessence" were, and this may put off some. Well, the lyrics may make for some odd reading, and they use words in ways that they're not typically used (like how "Columnated ruins domino" requires "domino" to be used as a verb, as the phrase is total nonsense otherwise), but the phrases sound GREAT together, creating all sorts of images of decadence giving way to decay (with salvation only coming through the innocence of children). There are gobs of interesting details in this song (one that I've especially enjoyed for a while is how great the chromatic rising scale underpinning "The fullnes of the wine/the dim last toasting" sounds), and while this might be as far from the classic idea of The Beach Boys as one can get, I'm perfectly ok with that.

WIth how great the album finishes, it's tempting for me to boost the rating even higher, but ehn, I'd rather not; it's still a pretty short album, and the first half does have some awfully lame moments. Even if it's not quite a great album, though, Surf's Up is still a remarkable one, and I'm glad that, along with Sunflower, it has a small cult following. As previously stated, the Sunflower/Surf's Up two-fer is an absolute must-have for any Beach Boys fan, and it stands as one of the best two-fers I can think of (the two volumes of All the Stuff and More that each contain two early Ramones albums come to mind as surpassing it, but I'm drawing a blank beyond that).

As on 20/20, the narrative of the circumstances surrounding this album could be enough to argue for its inferiority without even needing to jump into the actual contents, but as on 20/20 (albeit to a lesser extent), the result is definitely better than it could have turned out. The roots rock aspects only stick around for the first five tracks, and the last three basically sound like what I would have expected the bulk of the album to sound like if the aftermath of Surf's Up had been a little calmer. The two Fataar/Chaplin songs are by no means spectacular, but they're quite decent; "Here She Comes" strikes me as a rather decent synthesis of the sounds of The Band and Procol Harum, featuring a nice piano part (with organ tucked into the background), and "Hold On Dear Brother" is decent acoustic piano/slide-guitar balladry that probably could have been done by a hundred different bands but that doesn't especially hurt anything. Out of the other three (which all have Brian credits), "Marcella" is by far the best, described by Brian as his attempt to write a Rolling Stones song, but it's definitely a Rolling Stones song full of Beach Boys trademarks; Carl's soaring "SHE'S A BRIGHT GIRL ..." hook in the verses is spectacular, and the various vocal syncopations over the keyboards and other instruments (such as the slide solo in the middle) are a real treat. As for the other two, the opening "You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone" shows the band trying so hard to sound like a cross between The Band and The Beatles circa "Get Back" (to decent effect; Carl's growling vocals are rather charming in the way that they try to sound so much tougher than he actually is, and there are some decent guitar parts over the barroom piano. not to mention some "Hey we're still the Beach Boys and we're great at doing complicated vocal layering" parts in the middle), and "He Come Down" (with credits from Al and Mike as well) is an amusing attempt a multi-denominational (read: not just Christian) gospel song that's ... ok enough. The piano line is pretty great at least, and it's amusing to hear them finally tackle gospel in some form, even if not in an ideal form.

Admittedly, the first five tracks don't provide the most striking of impacts on the whole, and it would be difficult to justify a rating even as high as a 9 based on them, but the last three tracks are quite good and make the decision an easy one. One of them is another Al/Mike collaboration (with Carl thrown in as well) called "All This is That," and while the lyrics don't really register as much more than a mantra chorus surrounded by quasi-religious mush in the verses, the vocals and melody make it into a very good mantra chorus surrounded by very good quasi-religious mush, and the song is both stately and hypnotic in a way that impresses me. The other two tracks are Dennis ballads, and they're of his usual high quality of the period, even if they're inexplicably co-written by Daryl Dragon of Captain and Tennille fame. "Make it Good" is basically nothing but worn vocals over majestic strings (with some horns thrown in), but it's an emotional gutbuster just as so many of his songs are, and the fact that I don't remember how a single line of the melody goes is almost irrelevant to me. Even better is the closing "Cuddle Up," which I initially felt skeptical about because I couldn't imagine how anybody could write a decent ballad with the name "Cuddle Up," but which ends up sounding spectacular. The piano part underneath is simple but lovely, some bits of the chord sequences are just off-kilter enough to make them interesting, and the orchestration once more works perfectly. The mid-section, in which Dennis disappears for a while, should feel like gross padding, but instead it feels like a necessary prelude to the final stretch of singing, and the song lets the album end on a level of epic grandiosity not remotely hinted at by the first half the album.

Yes, there is a lot to criticize with this album, not just in the individual song quality but in how it sounds less like a single cohesive album than 60% of one album superglued to 30% of another album (I'm leaving out the 10% because the album is only 34 minutes, which is long for a Beach Boys album but short for a normal album by 1972). Yes, roots rock from a band as un-rootsy as The Beach Boys was probably not the best of ideas, since there was no way that, at this late a date, they could learn to compete with the best bands that had been doing this kind of music for years. And yet ... I don't dislike any individual song on here, and I really like some of them, so why wouldn't I give this a solidly decent grade? I wouldn't seek this out before listening to about ten other Beach Boys albums (including Holland, with which this album is commonly packaged), and I can see why the band quickly distanced itself from it, but it's quite good all the same.

In broad strokes, this album is slow, soft, gentle music for boring aging people, and while I don't quite love it I nonetheless enjoy it a good deal (I'm hardly somebody who will demand "rocking energy" from The Beach Boys, even if up-beat old-school rocking energy was such a large part of their original charm). The album does start and end in a more rollicking fashion, but generally this is an album that's much more concerned with overall effect, both on the song level and on the album level, than with providing strong individual moments. For instance, "The Trader" is a keyboard-heavy sorta-rocker (this one is based heavily on piano and on a Moog synth providing the bassline, which is common on this album) with a passionate delivery from Carl, and with some great harmonies, and every time I hear it my two-part reaction is "I really enjoyed that!" and "I'm not sure I could hum more than three seconds of this song if I had to!" "Leaving This Town" (the lone Fataar/Chaplin collaboration on this album) sounds almost exactly like a contemporary Stevie Wonder ballad (and not a bad one at that), but again, aside from remembering the general arrangement (and that there's a long slow Moog solo in the middle), it doesn't stick (and yet, once again, I find myself liking it when on and having fond feelings for it when it's not on). "Only With You" (the lone Dennis ballad, sung by Carl) is better (because it's Dennis doing Dennis songwriting things at his peak), and it's a very lovely piano-based number, but it is one sleeeeepy song.

The centerpiece of the album, the three-part "California Saga" on the first half, produces a similar sense of contended mellowness, on the whole, though it does have some memorable moments that help break the slight sense of monotony that the album sometimes provides. The Jardine-penned/Love-sung (with some additional vocals from Brian) third part (entitled "California"), in particular, is an absolute delight; Jardine basically rewrites "California Girls" as a country number (changing the lyrics, of course), and the effect is awesome (just try and listen to that bouncing melody and those joyful harmonies and not feel happy, I dare you). The other two parts might seem too earnest to be taken seriously on first listen: lightweight memorable reminisces of home are placed side by side with pompous piano and poetry about eagles, and I know that I wasn't too sure about these tracks at first. Eventually, I came around to them: they show Mike and Al doing their very best to play along with musical directives that were foreign to their core sensibilities, and it's kinda touching that, stranded in a far off country, they would find the concepts of majesty and nobility most easily expressed in their love for their home state. It's strange to me that Mike and Al (who also wrote the music of "The Beaks of Eagles") would end up creating the most artsy-fartsy track of the album (and the most artsy-fartsy music the band had done since Pet Sounds) but I'm glad that they held their noses just this once.

The other three tracks, two at the start and one at the end, have a little more energy than the bulk, and they're good enough to ensure the album the rating I give it. "Sail on, Sailor" is probably the least "authentic" Beach Boys hit (at least, pre-"Kokomo"), in that Brian's involvement was somewhat limited (there are conflicting reports but it seems that Van Dyke Parks had more to do with it than Brian or anyone else with co-credits), and I kinda wish that Dennis had made more than one attempt on the song, but ultimately Blondie Chaplin did a great job singing it, and the combination of keyboards and tasteful guitars with the steady beat and the big anthemic chorus are enough to make it a classic. Dennis' "Steamboat" is a fascinating attempt to make an arrangement emulate the engine of its namesake, and when the Gilmour-like slide guitar parts (from guest guitarist Tony Martin) jump in, the song becomes an atmospheric wonder. And finally, "Funky Pretty" leans more on the second word in its title than the first, but it's an entertaining way to close out the album, and the trade-off of vocals (five people are credited with lead vocals on this) over the Moog is a lot of fun.

As mentioned, the album also came with a bonus EP (which I'm not considering in setting the rating for this album), and given that Brian is involved with all 6 tracks and 12 minutes of it, it might be tempting to feel a need to hunt it down if you haven't previously. Well, while it has some slight charms, it also gives a sense of just how badly damaged Brian was at the time, and aside from a couple of snippets it isn't exactly music either. The full title of the EP is "Mount Vernon and Fairway (A Fairy Tale)," and it mostly consists of Jack Rieley narrating a bizarre tale that Brian wrote about a prince who learns about rock and roll through a magic transistor radio from a pied piper. I've listened to this a few times in my life, and I'll probably come back to it a few more times in my life because I'm a sucker who doesn't value his free time, but I don't enjoy this at all, and I'm glad the band didn't let Brian convince them to let him stick it on the main album.

As for the main album, it's not perfect by any stretch, but for whatever weaknesses it might have, it still feels like a right and logical place for the band to have ended up in the early 70s. Everything on here shows maturity and good taste in abundance, and I'm glad that the general consensus settled on regarding it as a very good album (even if there were and are some significant dissenters). In an ideal world, the band would have used this as the starting point for yet another stage of creative development, taking all of the strengths they had gained over the previous few years, maybe stripping out some of the weaknesses, and finding a respectable way to grow through the rest of the decade and beyond. That they consciously stepped away from that path is one of the great disappointments of my collection, of course, but that sad tale is for later. The silver age of The Beach Boys may have ended here, but it at least ended on a thoroughly positive note.

For all of this, I initially felt a lot of enthusiasm towards this live album, but over time that enthusiasm has greatly waned, and at this point I consider this as just another good live album from the band, and not necessarily better than Live in London. I enjoy hearing the band give these energetic and rousing performances of the newer material, but in the end I'm disappointed that there's not more of it; the lack of anything from Friends, 20/20, Sunflower or Surf's Up ends up putting a damper on any "look how much they promoted their later stuff!!" feelings that I might have towards this set. There were probably live performances from these tours of tracks from those albums that they could have included on this set, but they didn't, and instead they used a lot of space for the older stuff. Regarding the performances of older stuff, the songs all sound fine, but there's a simultaneous stiffness and roughness to them that I find unsettling; Carl does his best to cover for Brian in all the songs that Brian originally sang, but he couldn't simultaneously function as the band's lead vocalist and its best harmony vocalist, and this is just one of the ways in which these songs are trying to sound like the originals while having no hope of successfully sounding like the originals. I do like that they resurrected "You Still Believe in Me" and "Caroline No," but otherwise the list of included songs is rather predictable and boring, and it's just not as much fun to listen to bearded Mike Love in his 30s sing "Fun, Fun, Fun" as it is to listen to clean-shaven Mike Love in his 20s sing "Fun, Fun, Fun."

Perhaps this is a case of me taking what I know about how the band turned out later and using that information to draw conclusions ex post facto, but I feel like this album unintentionally shows the band at war with itself. Carl and Blondie and Ricky and Dennis were on one side, pushing the band towards the new and different (while Mike and Al would dutifully play their parts in this with only as much enthusiasm as required), while Mike and Al were on the other side, only showing great enthusiasm when they had the opportunity to play songs they'd done in their mid-20's (which the other members enjoyed as well, but wasn't a clear priority over the newer material). The band probably could have maintained this somewhat tense dynamic for a while, if things went smoothly, but it wasn't going to take much to disrupt this ... but that's for later. For now, this is a nice live album, and it's worth hearing, but I'd look for it as a $5 cut-out before I'd pay full price for it.

The studio context of how to capitalize on this proved a little trickier, and ultimately the band fell on its collective face. By late 1975 and early 1976, the band absolutely needed to get around to recording a new album; Holland had come out in early 1973, and the only efforts the band had made towards new recordings in the interim had come from brief stretches that had produced little material (in fairness, part of this was because a studio they'd recorded in had burned down and some of the material had been lost). When it came time to begin recording, it was clear that the band would not be taking similar approaches to those on previous albums; Jack Rieley was long fired, first replaced by James Guercio and then by Stephen Love (Mike's brother), and Stephen took the side of Mike and Al (against Carl and Dennis) that a more retro approach was called for in order keep in line with what had brought them success recently. As part of this, the band made a decision that sounded great from a marketing perspective but that would ultimately harm the album considerably; Brian Wilson, who was in a very rough spot in his life and didn't especially want to work with The Beach Boys anymore, was given (nominally) the sole responsibility for production, and also had to contribute lead vocals and some new material even though he wasn't in a great position to do so.

The resulting album isn't quite a disaster, but it's unnervingly close to one, and it's easily the worst album they'd done to this point (as well as the longest). There are many factors that contributed to this, but to me they all ultimately trace back to one single point: the band's (read: Mike, Al and Steve) refusal to acknowledge that their strengths and weaknesses in 1976 had little resemblance to their strengths and weaknesses in 1966. For Dennis and Carl to get shoved to the side as emphatically as they do here is inexcusable; neither one has a songwriting credit, and the scraps thrown to them in terms of vocal parts, as though they hadn't established themselves as the heart and soul of the band in the last few years, make me angry on their behalf. Instead, the songs are roughly split between originals from Brian and/or Mike (with an Al leftover from the Sunflower sessions, "Susie Cincinnati," thrown in for good measure; it wasn't really worth the wait) and a whole bunch of covers, and while both of these groups have some highlights the pickings are pretty slim. As for Brian's production work, well, I have my doubts about how much of it is actually him; I bet all of the synth patches were from him, but supposedly there was a great deal of overdubbing done after the fact against his wishes, and in the end it sounds like a confused mess.

As mentioned, there are some high points. Among the originals, I kinda like "It's OK," where Mike is trying oh so hard to produce another "Do it Again" and at least somewhat succeeds (though the low-pitched backing vocal reminds me more of what a Frank Zappa parody of a Beach Boys song would sound like than an actual Beach Boys song), and I'm also partial to "Had to Phone Ya," which features lovely vocal trade-offs over a whimsical clarinet before fading into Wilson repeatedly singing (in an absolutely decimated voice), "Come on/come on and answer the phone/come on come on." Among the covers, I really like "Talk to Me," where Carl gets to contribute a moving vocal before the song briefly turns into "Tallahassee Lassie," and I'm a huge fan of the closing cover of "Just Once in My Life," which is the only point on the album where the band properly takes advantage of the age and wear in Brian's voice rather than trying to pretend it isn't there. It's an extremely moving way to end things, and easily the best moment on the album for both Carl and Brian.

As for negatives, well, they're everywhere, more so on the covers side of things. One album that I suspect had an influence on how the band approached covers here was John Lennon's Rock 'n Roll released the previous year, in which he took a number of older 50's rock standards and filtered them hard through the 70s Spector sensibility; much of the material from this album sounds like it could have come from those sessions, only if this album consisted of the dregs of those sessions. It doesn't help that the nadir of the album kicks it off; the band's cover of "Rock 'n Roll Music" is absolutely DREADFUL, a stiff-as-a-board coked-up monster with weirdly off-kilter synths that sounds (again) like something another group would perform to make fun of The Beach Boys. The remaining covers aren't so much bad as they are boring; I guess I kinda like the build from quiet to loud of "Blueberry Hill," but the rest is uninteresting to me, including Dennis' cover of "In the Still of the Night," where he sounds as bored as can be. Regarding the other originals, there's some charm to "That Same Song," where Brian croaks over a music-hall backing, but that's as far as my compliments go; Mike's "Everyone's in Love With You" is pure schmaltz, Brian's "TM Song" (where Al sings about the benefits of transcendental meditation after an inexplicable skit that I have to assume is the band's attempt to call back to that particular tradition from its mid-60s albums) has never struck me as anything but dumb, and Brian's "Back Home" just seems boring to me.

More than just a mediocre-to-bad album, this is an instructive album on what can happen to a band if it's not properly thinking things through. The aggressive marketing campaign for the album helped it sell well, but the album was critically savaged, and it rightly tends to be regarded as a significant step down from earlier albums the band had done. Mike and his side of things were certainly right to conclude that the public still could enjoy the style of the early 60s version of The Beach Boys; what they failed to grasp was that, regardless of the success of their live shows (where nostalgia could generate its own level of enjoyment), audiences were primarily after the style of the early 60s version of The Beach Boys as performed by the early 60s version of The Beach Boys, and not as performed by an aging set of imposters. If you can get this as part of a two-fer with Love You, then it's worth getting, but beyond that your best bet is to pick off a few of the highlights and run away from the rest.

The level of praise this album sometimes receives strikes me as excessive, but I still enjoy this a great deal, and as with many cult albums where I don't share in all of the enthusiasm, I can still understand the enthusiasm. A factor that I don't think gets emphasized enough in evaluating this album is just how much more interested Carl and Dennis sound in participating on this than on its predecessor; whereas Mike and Al had been Brian's primary creative supplements on 15 Big Ones, with Carl and Dennis basically reduced to appendages, the tables are turned here, and the change is for the better. Mike and Al have some key vocal contributions on here, but they're definitely secondary figures overall on the album (it should be noted that Al later expressed great enthusiasm for this album; I don't know Mike's feelings on it but I'm guessing they're more tempered), whereas Carl has some secondary production work to his credit here (Brian is the official producer of course) in addition to all of his enthusiastic vocal performances, and Dennis sounds like he's having a lot of fun as well. In another later interview about the album, Al mentioned that the real title should be The Beach Boys Love Brian, and I think this could have been narrowed even further to The Wilsons Love Brian; it's clear that they absolutely wanted this to be successful, and certainly more successful than 15 Big Ones was (I also think they wanted it to be better than 15 Big Ones as a way to try and stick it to Mike, but that might be a degree of speculation too far).

In terms of the overall approach, the album that this reminds me the most of, strangely, is Wild Honey, only if it had been made 10 years later and, instead of soul, Brian's main interest was minimoogs. While this album bears little resemblance to Wild Honey in superficial elements, it nonetheless has three of the main aspects that made me like Wild Honey so much: (1) the melodies are once again a delightful blend of "this is a lot of fun to sing along to" and "what the hell is that??!!", (2) the songs are full of nervous quivering energy, not only from Brian but from everybody else, and (3) the songs are all really short and efficient, with the longest coming in at a whopping 3:05. The songs are drenched in all sorts of late 70s keyboards, with fuller elements (guitars, drums etc) added only as necessary, and the album ends up with a lo-fi vibe to it that's intoxicating rather than irritating (like, say, the lo-fi vibe of Smilely Smile is to me).

Songwise, this a very even album; not many songs are reasonably described as classics, but everything is enjoyable, and because everything is fairly short the songs go away before they have a chance to get annoying. Somewhat like Today!, this album is somewhat split into a "higher energy" half and a "lower energy" half; it wouldn't be exactly right to call them the "rockers" half and the "ballads" half, since the songs here don't exactly fall into either of those categories, but there is nonetheless a clear split between the two halves in terms of style. The opening salvo of "Let Us Go On This Way" (with Carl basically screaming the vocals over a pounding barrage of drums and organs) and "Roller Skating Child" (where Mike, Carl and Al join Brian in singing lyrics that come way closer to "Lolita" than I bet they thought they'd ever sing) gets the album off to a roaring start (when this album is credited with having proto-punk influences, I bet these tracks are largely what people are referring to), and while the album calms down a bit in terms of energy for a while, it never lets up in terms of intensity. "Mona" is the bounciest Dennis lead in years (I could easily envision this as a 15 Big Ones track, but it would have been the best of the originals on there by a good distance), "Johnny Carson" is a low-key screwy meditation on how great Johnny Carson is and how hard he works (Carson apparently thought the song was ridiculous, which is such a predictable reaction that it cracks me up), "Good Time" is a fun upbeat Wilson/Jardine leftover from the Sunflower sessions (the difference in Brian's voice on this song from his voice on the others is a little startling if you don't know how old this song is), "Honking Down the Highway" is a delightful Jardine-sung ditty with Brian and others singing "HONK HONK! HONKING DOWN THE HIGHWAY!!" as backup, and "Ding Dang" is a completely bonkers :58 piano-based vamp with a vocal loop that has to be heard to be believed (Mike was a trooper to sing the single-line of actual lyrics over and over for this). Again, these aren't quite classics (though "Let Use Go On This Way" and "Johnny Carson" come close), but they're all an awful lot of fun.

The second half begins with Brian's sole chance to have a solo vocal lead on the album, and the song ends up extremely endearing; "Solar System" is basically Brian singing about the planets and stars in a lyrical tone fit for a 9-year-old, over a synth-driven waltz, and it absolutely positively works even though it makes no sense to work. The rest of the half, then, doesn't show Brian making a full recovery in terms of his ability to write slower material, but it does show him making as much of a recovery as one could have possibly expected at this point, and these songs are a delight. The song that best resembles what the band could once accomplish is the Carl-sung "The Night Was So Young," and maybe that's why I like it most; when the backing vocals come in with "Is somebody gonna tell me why she has to hi-i-ide" (and subsequent variations), it's an absolutely heavenly moment. The Dennis-and-Carl-sung "I'll Bet He's Nice" is a highlight as well, giving a naked glimpse into a state of sad, melancholy mix of longing and jealousy, and the "Pretty darlin' you my pretty darlin'" descent after the rising verses makes for a great addition. Beyond that, the Brian-sung (along with his wife, Marilyn) "Let's Put Our Hearts Together" and the closing "Love is a Woman" are nice but unspectacular, but the Dennis-sung "I Wanna Pick You Up" (in which Brian manages to capture the odd inanity that comes from having a small child, right down to the fact that somehow patting your kid on the butt repeatedly will calm them down) and the Mike/Brian/Carl-sung "Airplane" (a gentle synth-ballad that climaxes into a glorious "Airplane airplane (carry me back to her side) / Airplane airplane (I need God as my guide)" before finishing up with 40 seconds of fun call-and-response over barroom piano) would have been highlights in any era of the band.

All in all, it's a very good album, but I would caution against getting it too quickly; Brian Wilson once suggested that it should be a potential fan's second purchase after Pet Sounds, and I completely disagree with that assessment. If anything, unless somebody is a hardcore fan who plans to hear everything the band ever did (in all of its inconsistent glory), I would say this could just as easily be the last album that a Beach Boys fan needs to get; it's so vastly different from everything else the band and Brian Wilson ever did, and sounds so potentially grotesque to somebody unaware of just what happened to Brian through the years, that I feel that appreciation for it can only happen with sufficient context in place. Still, properly prepared and warned, this album is a blast, and it's also Brian's last great moment with the band, which gives it additional emotional heft.

To a less impactful degree, this album is basically Dennis' version of All Things Must Pass, a one-stop dumping ground of songs that Dennis had been working on for years but hadn't been able to include on albums from his band due to intra-band politics. I want to be careful in making this comparison, obviously; in 1970, George Harrison was at the absolute peak of his powers as a songwriter and arranger, whereas in 1977, Dennis Wilson was a total mess whose abuse of drugs and alcohol had dragged him into a downward spiral that would ultimately help lead to his death in 1983. 1972 probably would have been the ideal moment for a Dennis Wilson solo album in terms of getting him at the height of his songwriting powers; by 1977 he was a little too ruined to deliver at the absolute peak of his potential. And yet, if this album doesn't represent the best that could possibly come from a Dennis Wilson solo album, then it gets at least 90% of the way there, and it's a total treat for anybody who's already a fan of the dozen or so songs he'd contributed to Beach Boys albums from 1968 to 1973. What the album may sometimes lack in clear direction of melody tends to get made up for in atmosphere and emotional power, and his ravaged voice continues to work to his benefit.

One of my favorite tracks from the album had actually originated as a Beach Boys song (the band had performed it live in 1970 a few times), and while it's fun to imagine a slightly modified "River Song" (written with Carl) wedged into Sunflower or Surf's Up, I'm glad that this album gets to benefit from it. The song is an unstoppable force of majestic water-inspired beauty, from the rolling piano lines that kick it off to the gospel choir to all of the contemplative moments in between, with a particularly great moment when the music dives down low to the "Rollin' rollin' rollin' on the river" line. Other Beach Boys helped with two other songs: "Pacific Ocean Blues" (written with Mike) is full of chaos in its vaguely bluesy arrangements (to great effect, and when Dennis sings "It's no wonder THE PACIFIC OCEAN IS BLUE" it's a lot of fun), and "Rainbows" (written with Carl), a cheerful mandolin-driven piano ballad that sounds so weirdly incongruous to his life situation at the time that it becomes mildly unsettling when considered upon too intensely (but is just so upbeat and happy otherwise).

Of the other tracks, only one is credited to Dennis alone; "Farewell My Friend," a mournful piano ballad (with a quiet drum part in the background and bits of synth dripped on top here and there, as well as some slide guitar parts that are devestating) written as a commemoration for a friend of his that had died in his arms (Carl's father-in-law), and which manages to manipulate the main "Loch Lomond" phrase ("You'll take the high road and I'll take the low road") in a way that becomes both affirming and absolutely depressing. Everything else is written in collaboration with others, mostly with Gregg Jakobson but occasionally with his on-again/off-again wife, Karen Lamm(-Wilson). Of these, the only ones that fall on the "uplifting" side of the emotional spectrum are "What's Wrong" (a fairly forgettable, oddly stiff big-band boogie rock number) and "You And I" (a fun keyboard-driven pop song), but even those can't help but have elements of unsettling melancholy in them (the way that the cheerful vibe of the former is in the vein of "Fake it 'til you make it," and the way that the latter features a ragged-voiced Dennis calling out "Nooooooo more looooooonely nights" as the 'chorus'). Everything else is dark and majestic and so often depressing as can be in vibe, even as the music itself might be interesting and memorable in its own right. My favorite of this batch is "Dreamer," where Dennis almost turns into a white version of Sly Stone circa Fresh (the groove + the bass harmonica + the horns + Dennis' wailing makes for an incredibly funky combination), but I'm also very fond of "Time" (which starts off as directionless piano-ballad atmosphere before turning into another horn-driven funk-groove that exudes "This bender is going to kill me isn't it"), "Friday Night" (which starts off sounding like every giant-sounding 70s song opener trick combined together before turning into angry Dire Straits), and the closing "End of the Show" (a keyboard ballad that sounds like the work of somebody who knows very well he's gonna die soon and just wants to show some gratitude before the inevitable happens). "Moonshine" (saloon music that turns into decent keyboard-based tearjerking) and "Thoughts of You" (mildly forgettable piano balladry except for a very dark and disturbing section in the middle) are a little weaker, but they're not enough to derail what's otherwise a really nice album overall.

In addition to providing a chance to hear a minor lost classic of the late 70s, the 2008 reissue also has a ton of great bonus material. In addition to some bonus tracks for the album itself (my favorite is an early solo version of "Only With You," which is better than the Carl-sung version that ultimately made it to Holland), the album also includes all of the previously unreleased material from the unfinished followup album, Bambu. I won't cover these tracks in particular (though I will say that "School Girl" is GREAT), but I will merely say that, based on the material here, Bambu would not have been a sophomore slump in the least. I can't envision any circumstance where somebody would enjoy the main album and not enjoy Bambu.

As with Love You, this is not an album where casual Beach Boys fans should be rushing out to get it based on its favorable reputation. As with Love You, there is simply too much necessary history and context to assimilate in order to understand why Dennis sounds the way he does on this album and why he isn't the happy-go-lucky lad from the band's classic days. If you are a fan of the post-Smile albums, though, then this album is an absolute must. Dennis was a difficult man, and he ultimately didn't write that much music, but he has to have one of the highest batting averages of any "secondary" songwriter from a major band, and that carries over in force to his solo album.

Ehn, I like about half of it, so I can't quite hate this, even if the chunk of the album that I don't like is somewhat dreadful. The first half of the album, for the most part, has a clear and deliberate retro tilt to it, while the second half is clearly trying to sound a little more contemporary, and both halves have their ups and downs. In the first half, my least favorite tracks are "Hey Little Tomboy" (a leftover from the Love You sessions that's pretty great in terms of the tune but incredibly uncomfortable in the lyrics, and which suggests that a large part of the reason "Roller Skating Child" worked was because the arrangements and production were so bonkers, whereas trying to present a song like this straight basically ruins it) and "Kona Coast" (a reworking of one of the Christmas album tracks into something that's a clear rip off of "Hawaii" from Surfer Girl, and not a very good one), but I like the others. "Come Go With Me" (The Del-Vikings) and "Peggy Sue" (Buddy Holly) are Jardine-sung covers that are often regarded as low points for the band, but I find them perfectly acceptable; I'd rather hear covers like this from The Beach Boys with more normal production than what Brian would have provided in the context of 15 Big Ones. I enjoy the other originals from this side as well; "She's Got Rhythm" resurrects Brian's falsetto (which honestly doesn't sound that much worse than before) in a fun up-tempo song that, with some small changes, would have sounded perfectly at home in the early 60s, and "Wontcha Come Out Tonight," as easy as it might be to mock the incessant "Komma komma komma" backing vocals, is so effortlessly memorable while not sounding trite that I can't help but like it.

The second half, where the band tries to get with the times a little more, is three really good songs and three really bad songs. "Sweet Sunday Kinda Love," where Carl makes his lone lead vocal contribution on the album, is a really good one; it's a little sappy, but it's brisk and crisp in the melody, and it's lovely overall. "Belles of Paris," where Mike sings a lot of the lyrics in French and generally absorbs some French pop influences, is a really bad one. "Pitter Patter," as lightweight as it may be in the lyrics, is a really good one and my favorite of the album; it's a great up-tempo pop-rock song where the incessant backing vocals singing the title imitate rain fall, and both Love and Jardine sound great singing lead against them. "My Diane" is another good one, this time featuring Dennis contributing vocals to a Brian song; it's a melancholy piano ballad that sounds like a full band version of a Pacific Ocean Blue song, and I'm struck by how Dennis repeatedly sings "My Diane" in a way that sounds close to "My dyin'." "Match Point of Our Love," where Brian sings a cheesy generic late-70s pop song that attempts to create an awkward tennis metaphor for a relationship, is a bad one. And finally, "Winds of Change," a cover of a song by King Harvest, is a bad one of the "HOW COULD THEY PUT THIS ON AN ALBUM" variety; it's not just the tackiness of the melody, lyrics and overall arrangement that gets me, it's how genuinely bad Mike's vocal performance is in trying to sing this in a convincing way or even in a way that doesn't sound like he isn't breathing at the right times to let him hold notes out properly. Maybe they should have just let Dennis sing this one if they had to include it.

I actually liked this one a surprising amount the first couple of times I heard it, but unfortunately this isn't an album that holds up under close scrutiny; eventually I couldn't help but do the math on how many tracks I actually liked and how many I was enduring on some level or another. Still, I'd say it's better than its overall reputation, and it's worth hearing the tracks I mentioned positively at some point. At the very least, listen to "Pitter Patter" and "My Diane" once or twice.

Most of the ire that this album receives is centered around one track, and I guess I should get that part of the review out of the way. The second half of the album begins with an 11-minute disco version of "Here Comes the Night" (one of the many delightful songs from Wild Honey), with Carl supplanting Brian on vocals and the band indulging in every disco cliche imaginable. It's the easiest thing in the world to point to this track as the ultimate example of an older band jumping on contemporary trends when they probably shouldn't, and along with "Kokomo" or various mistakes from Summer in Paradise it's generally regarded as the band's lowest point. Well, I don't hate it; the song lends itself surprisingly well to a disco format (which would have been very difficult to predict based on the original version), and I can honestly say that I enjoy it a lot for the first 6 minutes or so. Now, even my patience starts to wear thin when the song keeps going beyond that point, and 11 minutes was definitely an overreach (this is the band's longest album yet, and this track is the main reason why), but I can think of much worse ways to spend 11 minutes of my life as a listener.

Honestly, I'm not sure how much people end up retaining from this album beyond that track, because much of the album strikes me as quite good. Aside from the Carl-penned "Full Sail," a keyboard-heavy song that heavily features Carl's voice but leaves almost no impression, the first half of the album consists entirely of songs that I would consider "pretty good" or better. The one-two opening duo of "Good Timin'" (a Brian/Carl leftover from the 15 Big Ones sessions, full of rich vocal harmonies that are as good as ever) and "Lady Lynda" (a song from Al about his wife, which adapts Bach's "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" into a gentle love song that's as stately as can be) get the album off to a fine start, and while "Full Sail" hurts things a bit, the next three tracks are all definite winners. "Angel Come Home," penned by Carl and sung by Dennis, combines forceful drums and a great keyboard sound with a passionate Dennis delivery to make this into a strong piece of keyboard-heavy gospel-ish rock. "Love Surrounds Me" had actually been recorded already for Bambu, Dennis' attempt at a second solo album, and if you like Dennis in general I don't see how you won't like this; it's basically low-key keyboard-heavy reggae-tinged balladry, soaked with an atmosphere of bitter irony and despair. And finally, Mike's "Sumahama" could have been very bad very easily ... but somehow it's very good. It's a gentle pop song built around Eastern-sounding ideas (I dinked it out on a piano and found that it's either written in a Phrygian mode or in G minor, neither of which is generally associated with Eastern music) and is astonishingly catchy without being overly simplistic, and while Mike sounds about as silly trying to sing in Japanese here as he did trying to sing in French in "Belles of Paris," I'm more inclined to forgive him here than there.

With all of my praise for the first half of the album, I start to wonder if I should consider giving this an even higher grade, but the second half is a little problematic, even beyond the 11-minute disco song on a 1979 Beach Boys album. "Baby Blue" (another Dennis-penned song, this time sung by Carl and Dennis) is a very lovely piano ballad (it gets somewhat directionless in the second half but that's never bothered me with Dennis and won't start now), but the last two tracks somewhat let down the album. "Goin' South" is another boring slow Carl-song, full of lovely vocal tones but little else to offset the general adult contemporary vibe, and while the band's presentation of "Shortenin' Bread" here might have made for an amusing Frank Zappa interlude, it just doesn't work for me at all on a Beach Boys album. Brian Wilson had been obsessed with this song in different forms for about a decade, and while I suppose it was nice of them to throw this on the album as a sort of tribute, I could have done without it.

Still, even with the album's dip near the end, I find the hatred this album tends to receive nearly inexplicable, and I happily give it a decent grade (even if it's right on the border between a 7 and 8 on my scale). So help me, even if the band was old and falling apart and mostly without Brian, they still had Dennis making tangible contributions again (I have to imagine that a lot of backroom politicking took place to make sure Dennis got back into the mix), and Mike inexplicably stepping up his game, and a bunch of other decent material as well. I suppose this album isn't as important as, say, Surfin' Safari or Surfin' USA, but the shortcomings of this album bother me less than the shortcomings of those albums, and there's an awful lot of good to be found here. Only hardcores need to hear this, but hardcores need to hear this, if only for the Dennis songs.

Sadly, the band did not break up.

The first half of the album isn't quite hopeless, but it's not terribly far off. I eventually convinced myself to hear the merits of the Carl-sung (penned by Brian and Mike) "Oh Darlin'," a not especially memorable ballad that nonetheless has some touching parts from both Carl and Mike, and while I find the bulk of the sax-driven "Some Of Your Love" ridiculous (once again, the backing vocals sound more like a Zappa parody of The Beach Boys than the band itself), I find the "Kiss me baby / Hold me tight tonight" harmonized interlude in the middle a nice reminder of how good the band could sound in its prime. On the other hand, the band's cover of Chuck Berry's "School Day" is impossible for me to take seriously, yet it still sounds incredible in comparison to the title track (which can't figure out if it's a contemporary pop rocker or a retro throwback and manages to fail spectacularly in both) and "Livin' With a Heartache" (a four-minute country song that somehow manages to be overlong by more than three minutes) both of which Carl wrote with Randy Bachman, (yup, the guy from Bachman Turner Overdrive).

The second half at least ends decently, though the first three tracks are just as abysmal as the worst parts of the first half. "Goin' On" is one of the least convincing R&B-style songs imaginable; "Sunshine" is another attempt to recapture the band's love of tropical islands but a much worse listen than "Kona Coast" was; and "When Girls Get Together," an awkward vaudeville throwback that the band had sitting in the vaults since 1969, gives the sense that the band had absolutely nothing left of value from that era (which wasn't entirely true, oddly). The last two tracks are also pulled from the vaults, but as I said, they're at least not terrible. "Santa Ana Winds" is a Jardine-penned ode to Southern California that would have been among the better tracks from M.I.U., and Johnston's "Endless Harmony," beset with cheesy tinkly synthesized piano as it might be, is nonetheless a nice throwback to the days when the band had an interest in not sounding like a bad imitation of its 20s self (the track was from the early stages of the Carl and the Passions sessions, from before Johnston was fired). The harmonies are really nice, at least, and while the last minute borders on tastelessness in terms of its anthemic cheese, it somehow doesn't cross the line.

Honestly, and I know that taste is taste and all that, but it breaks my brain that somebody would hate L.A. more than this one. For all of its many weaknesses, L.A. had some creative spunk and stylistic variety to it, and while much of it doesn't sound like the classic sense of what The Beach Boys are supposed to sound like, I tend to find that works to the album's advantage. This album, by contrast, ends up mimicking its album cover in ways that I'm sure were not intended; on the whole, the album sounds dreadfully contrived, and I just can't quite figure out whom they expected to want to buy this. Overall, it's not as bad as things would eventually become, but it's not far off either.

In terms of overall performance and vibe, the band has clearly embraced that it's a total nostalgia act at this point, and while Carl and Dennis might not have been thrilled about this in private, they put on enthusiastic and professional performances that show they at least had respect enough for their fans not to let them down in any way. Mike and Al are clearly the dominant figures at this point (Al, in particular, seems intent on making his singing and guitar playing as energetic and rousing as possible, and even if some of his sloppiness is a little startling at times it's rather endearing), and at least in this context this doesn't feel like the worst thing in the world. Brian is parked behind a keyboard the whole time (Bruce is playing bass, as usual), contributing lots of backing vocals and taking lead just a couple of times, and the band seems to be going out of its way to direct the love of the crowd towards him (on his birthday) as much as possible (he was touring largely because his therapist had recommended it as a healthy activity for him, and he doesn't seem to hate it too much). The various supplemental musicians somewhat overpower the main group in terms of instrumental parts (especially Ed Carter's guitar parts), but they don't ruin the sound, so I don't especially mind it.

There are some parts I clearly like more than others (when Dennis sings "You Are So Beautiful," it's very moving, especially knowing that this was his last major performance in Britain), and some parts I clearly like less than others ("Be True to Your School" is still as awful as ever, for instance), but on the whole it's a very even, very pleasant listen, and while I'll probably only listen to chunks of it when I come across them in shuffle, I'll definitely be happy to hear them when I do. If you're a fan and you have money burning a hole in your pocket, consider getting this.

The first half of this album, in particular, absolutely fascinates me. All of the songs on this side feel like they have some of the elements to end up rather enjoyable; the instrumentation is crisp (if sterile), Carl's vocals are solid (the vocals of Myrna Smith, the wife of his manager at the time, are less so), and there are various aspects to the general framework of each of the songs that are clearly thought through and different from contemporary Beach Boys. In every case, though, the actual melodies and harmonies are so thoroughly uninspired as to let down all of the professionalism that went into crafting the various structures around them. Take something like the "chorus" of "What You Gonna Do About Me," for instance; it sounds like a rough draft placeholder for the future finished product, and had Carl brought this song out for evaluation in a Beach Boys context (in the hypothetical scenario where the band was a healthier environment that would have actually considered a song not about surfing), I'm pretty sure somebody would have suggested that he add a couple of more chord changes in there so that his voice would make any impact whatsoever. Similar general ideas hold for the dance pop of "Hold Me" and "Bright Lights" and the guitar-heavy R&B-ish jam-heavy (in a limited capacity, of course) "Right Lane," all of which feel like starting points for better tracks that never had a chance to get beyond the embryo stage.

The second of the album is a little better, with the exception of the ridiculous dance pop of "The Grammy," which is fairly decent until the moment when the first female vocals come in, after which it becomes unsalvagable. "Hurry Love" is probably not that much better than his more forgettable material from L.A., but I really dig the way he sings "close to your heart" in falsetto or the descending guitar sounds that pop up about halfway through. Much better are "Heaven," a genuinely emotional and atmospheric acoustic-based ballad that has Carl's best use of falsetto on the album, and the closing "Seems So Long Ago," another ballad in the adult-contemporary that nonetheless seems to have a lot of care put into the vibe and more care in the melody than much of the rest of the album. The ending sax part isn't the best thing in the world, but I won't condemn the song because of it.

And that's it! Carl just didn't have a lot of inspiration at this point, and for whatever resources he might have had at his disposal by going the solo route, they just couldn't turn his thin ideas into something especially worth having. Definitely hunt down a copy of "Heaven," and maybe seek out the other couple of tracks I mentioned, but don't go chasing after this otherwise. I'd rather listen to this than Keepin' the Summer Alive, but there are a lot of things I'd rather do than listen to that.

Carl: Carl left the band in 1981 because he felt frustrated that the others felt little need to write new material (either in quantity or in style) and were content to spend the rest of their lives doing the same kind of nostalgia-ridden shows over and over again. After finding that the world wasn't eagerly waiting for a Carl Wilson solo career, Carl came back in 1982, under the condition that he be granted more input into shaping their live shows (he also put out another solo album, Youngbloods, in 1983, which I have not yet heard).

Brian: While Brian had resumed touring and (sporadically) writing for the band in the late 70s as a way to help get him back in a better state, he nonetheless continued to exhibit unsettling behavior that indicated that his mental illness wasn't really improving (like when he disappeared for several days only for people to find him playing piano in a gay bar, or when he went homeless for a time). Eventually, his drug problem (where he was often using everything at once) forced the band to intervene on his behalf, and while Brian wanted no part of him, the band made him start working with Eugene Landy again (where Landy would basically exert some level of control on every part of Brian's life in order to keep him alive and functional). By the time of The Beach Boys, Brian's physical health had improved, even if he still wasn't in a position yet to start writing and arranging a lot of new material.

Dennis: Dennis, who had increasingly disconnected himself from the group through the years due to his changing artistic sensibiities and his increasing problems with alcohol and cocaine, reached a point where the band decided they had to put him into the Landy program as well. Dennis refused; the others kicked him out of the band; Dennis and Mike ended up getting restraining orders against each other; he eventually became homeless, floating in and out of rehab centers; and finally he drowned off the coast of Los Angeles after diving while intoxicated. Thanks to special permission from President Reagan, Dennis was buried at sea.

Many bands would have just called it a day at this point, but the band was still a strong concert draw, which provided enough reason for them to keep on going. When CBS reminded them that they still owed an album and should probably get around to it one of these days, the band decided to pander as hard as they could. The band's ultimate choice for a producer, Steve Levine, had previously made his bones as the producer for Culture Club (yup, that's Boy George's band), and not only does he make many of the same general choices on this album that he made with CC, but the album has actual contributions from CC (one song, "Passing Friend," is written by Boy George and guitarist Roy Hay). The overall sound shows a band that has completely embraced every bad stereotype that comes to mind from somebody who doesn't like much of mainstream 80s pop music; everything sounds plastic, everything sounds fake, everything sounds bad.

And yet, while everything sounds bad, that doesn't mean everything is bad. The outside contributions are dreck ("Passing Friend" basically sounds like a slightly more elaborate crappy Carl Wilson solo number, and Stevie Wonder's contribution, "I Do Love You," is a sub-par by-numbers imitation of what Wonder could do even at the time), and the army of supporting musicians does its best to mute the contributions of the actual Beach Boys members, but the contributions are present and they sound surprisingly enjoyable when they make their way to the surface. Even at their best, of course, the songs here don't sound especially original or full of creative spark; the opening "Getcha Back" (overlooking the uncomfortable lyrics where Mike is asking an old flame to cheat on her current mate with him so that they can get back together) and the later "California Calling" (two of my favorites from the album) both walk upon well-trodden ground ("Getcha Back," written with veteran 60s producer Terry Melcher, is yet another retro-surf number a la "Do it Again," and "California Calling" recycles all sorts of familiar ideas), but there's a genuine charm and glimpse of tuneful inspiration to these that didn't to pop up on something like "Keepin' the Summer Alive." In general, there's a lot of genuinely solid vocal interplay and harmonizing, with lots of moments that instinctually trigger warm nostalgic feelings inside of me, and these are enough to keep me from falling entirely into the instinctual reaction of "Wow, this album sounds HORRIBLE."

There's a lot of dreck on this album, of course, and it's not worth covering all of it, but it is worth pointing out some of the better tracks, the ones that emerge on repeated listens as ones that justify not knocking this album out of print. Brian has a small number of contributions on this album, and while two of them ("Crack at Your Love," co-written with Al, and the sax-heavy synth-pop "I'm So Lonely") are forgettable, the others (tucked at the end) are rather nice. "It's Just a Matter of Time" is a slow harmonica-laden number that serves as a strong reminder that the band's vocal harmonies could save a lot of lesser material all by themselves, and the CD bonus track (not available on the original vinyl release) "Male Ego," co-written with Mike, is an amusing up-tempo song that serves as the album's sole glimpse into the goofily-entertaining-as-hell style that Brian would feature in spades on his solo album a few years later. Other minor highlights are the Carl-penned "It's Gettin' Late" (the production is especially bad here, but Carl puts on a great vocal performance that ranges from full-force to more delicate very well), the Bruce-penned "She Believes in Love" (adult contemporary that somehow works because of the great Carl and Bruce alternating vocals) and the Carl/Bruce-penned "Where I Belong" (another gentle mellow song that hitches itself entirely to the vocals, and which works because both the lead and backing parts are so lovely, especially when Al has his rising part in the back).

Make no mistake, this album is a poor one, beneath the dignity of The Beach Boys in so many ways, and I can't remotely recommend for a casual listener to pick this up and listen to it straight through multiple times. And yet, as bad as it might be, it's not hopeless in the same way that so much of Keepin' the Summer Alive (or what would come later) is hopeless, and parts of it are absolutely worth listening to once in a while. If you don't absolutely despise 80s mainstream production values to the point that their presence automatically disqualifies any music that makes use of them, there's a chance could could enjoy some of this.

PS: this album is most easily available in a two-fer with Keepin' the Summer Alive, a combination that probably ranks as the worst two-fer available from a major band. The promotional blurb on the back of this two-fer absolutely fascinates me: "The two wholly original studio albums The Beach Boys released during the Eighties, Keepin' the Summer Alive and The Beach Boys contribute towards the long history of 'America's Band' ..." On most of the band's reissues starting from Sunflower/Surf's Up, the space near the top of the back of the album is reserved for a quote that offers some measure of praise for one or both of the albums included therein. In this case, though, the absolute best that the people putting together the packaging for this could do was a blurb that asserts the existence of these albums and that The Beach Boys made them. It absolutely cracks me up.

Admittedly, cutting through the arrangements to get to the meat of the songs takes a little grace and imagination, and I do find myself wondering in spots how much better various sections would have sounded with The Wrecking Crew rather than, for instance, a blaring synth horn imitating The Wrecking Crew. Nonetheless, I find that I don't have to try that hard to hear the glimpses of genius underneath surface, whereas with, say, The Beach Boys, I have to put a little bit of sweat into the same process. Aside from "One for the Boys" (a great two-minute self-harmonizing exercise in the middle) and the closing "Rio Grande," the album has a close split between ballads and more up-beat songs, and Wilson's maniacal genius manifests in both categories with great aplomb. "Walkin' the Line" is a song that a cynic might want to give up on after three seconds due to the arrangement, but when Brian starts yelling "WALK WALK WALKIN' I'M WALKIN' THE LINE / GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME LOVIN' TONIGHT" over that descending synth part (it's a borrowing from "Here Today" but it's such a great borrowing that I ignore it), I'm ready to forgive any and all flaws in the overall arrangement. "Little Children," "Night Time" and "Meet Me in My Dreams Tonight" all have moments when they sound like cheesy Christmas music, but they're all such a glorious combination of in-your-face-memorable and absolutely goofy that I enjoy them immensely.

The ballads, of course, are where people will inevitably focus on a Brian Wilson solo album, and again, even if they're not arranaged in the same way as the best stuff from the 1965 and 1966 period, they're still teriffic. "Love and Mercy" is the big universal anthem of the bunch, and what it loses in not having a more "real" arrangement it gains in Wilson showing a sense of mature awareness of the world around him that he might not have had 20 years earlier. It's a plea for people to be kinder to each other in general, but it's neither an especially preachy plea nor an especially hopeless plea, and it's so charming in lyrics and melody that I can't help but like it despite all of the keyboards. "Melt Away" (my favorite of the other ballads, especially in the glorious "I won't let you see me suffer / Whoa not me ..." part), "Baby Let Your Hair Grow Long," "There's So Many" (a spiritual successor to "Solar System") and "Let it Shine" (co-written by Jeff Lynne) are all lovely in their own way as well; for all of the bad keyboards that could potentially ruin the material, there are so many melody twists and well-conceived vocal overdubs that I'm able to focus on those instead.

As much as I like the "regular" pop songs that make up the bulk of the album, though, my heart ultimately gravitates most towards the closing "Rio Grande." It's not a suite of Smile leftovers (though there are references to the "Fire" section from the unfinished "Elements" chunk), but the track is art-pop in the spirit of Smile, reveling in the idea of taking the American mythos and depicting it through a bunch of eccentric pop meanderings. The song is 8:12 and has six parts, and it weirdly feels like a cross between Smile and one of the mini-operas from late 60s Who, all for the better. Part A is basically mock-Western/calliope music full of Smile sound-effects; Part B is a cowboy song that builds into a grand "Rollin' rollin' rollin' on" climax (probably in tribute to Dennis' "River Song"); Part C seems to be about cowboys getting overtaken by Indians, as the music turns from generic cowboy music into generic Indian dance music; Part D is a chunk of harmonized balladry as beautiful as anything else on the album; Part E (subtitled "Night Bloomin' Jasmine") is a snippet of eerie minor-key harmonies that probably wouldn't have worked as a full song but works as a brief section within a larger piece; and finally Part F brings back all of the best parts of the song (the campfire guitars, the odd harmonies, the "Rollin' ..." part, and the overall atmosphere) for a rousing conclusion. The song makes no sense on one level, and all of the sense in the world on another, and if there's a better summary of where Brian Wilson's life stood in 1988, I can't think of it.

Get this album! No, it's not exactly the Brian that changed the musical world 20 years earlier, but along with Love You it's easily the best BB-related collection of entirely new product after the post-Smile years (I'm not counting the 2004 Smile here because that's not entirely new product), and it absolutely demolishes all of the other material that came from the band in the 80s. In a just world, this would have marked the start of a flood of new material (which did not happen for various reasons), but what's here is terrific. Also, the 2000 issue of this album has a bunch of bonus tracks, most of which are either demos or interviews some of which are full-fledged songs (the best of which is the single "Let's Go to Heaven in My Car").

There's also the "Kokomo" problem. They had to include it here, of course; it had appeared in the recent Tom Cruise movie Cocktail and had inexplicably provided the band with a number one single (note that only Mike Love appeared in the credits from the band; the others were Terry Melcher, Scott McKenzie, and John Philips). Well, it may not be the worst song the band ever did, or even the worst song to appear on this album (that honor falls to the aforementioned "Wipe Out" cover, which cannot be enjoyed by a rational person in a non-ironic manner), but it's definitely the worst major hit single that was penned and recorded by the band. Like many people, I do enjoy Carl's falsetto "that's where we want to go ..." part, but also like many people, it's the only part I can tolerate. I mean, it rhymes "Bahama" with "pretty mama," and that's only one of like ten major sins within the song! The song demonstrates a complete lack of understanding from Mike as to what made the band so enjoyable back in its hey-day, and if somebody lists "Kokomo" as one of their favorite Beach Boys songs, I'm going to judge them.

The rest of the album isn't much better on the whole, but it does have some acceptable parts. I hate myself so much for it, because I'm pretty sure I could make a strong argument to bash it if I put some effort into it, but I enjoy the title track a dozen times more than I enjoy "Kokomo," and I wouldn't mind hearing it every couple of years. The guitars tucked in the background provide a shiny balance to the electronic drums that somehow aren't as distracting as they should be, and while the lyrics and vocals are filled with a vibe of "Hey remember when we used to sing songs about cars, weren't those awesome, don't you want to hear us sing more songs about cars??" that's somewhat pathetic, I find the vocal interplay a lot of fun. Even better is the Johnston/Love (with Melcher and Philips) collaboration "Somewhere Near Japan," which sounds awfully similar to something off of Yes' Talk album a few years later (think "Walls"), and while that might sound like a terrible description to some, it sounds like a perfectly decent description to me. Once again, the guitars and vocals have been filtered through the late 80s with great aplomb, but everybody sounds lovely, especially Carl when he starts singing his "My engine's all burned out .." part.

Oh, but everything else is so so so very bad. Al contributes "Island Girl," which somehow manages to take all of the bad aspects of "Kokomo" and make them even worse, without contributing anything like the one redeeming part that "Kokomo" provided. Brian contributes one song with "In My Car," and while it kinda sounds like a Brian Wilson leftover, that's not a compliment here; none of the aspects of gloriously goofy genius that made that album so enjoyable appear here. And finally, "Make it Big" is every bad stereotype of late 80s pop music from aging bands dumped into one three minute burst; it's hard to come up with a more elaborate description than that.

Mercifully, Capitol decided to ignore this album (and the next one) when reissuing the band's catalogue in the early 2000s, so if you have some weird completist bug in regards to the band, you have an excuse not to look for it. It's worth hearing the best tracks a couple of times, but beyond that the most praise I can offer is that it's still better than what came a few years later.

* The band's covers of other people's material have to rank among the least necessary and inspired versions of these songs that could possibly exist. Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime" has all of the warmth and majesty of the original sucked out of it and replaced with sterility and generic sax solos, and both "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" and "Under the Boardwalk" get mangled nearly beyond recognition.

* The band's covers of its own material are probably even more offensive. "Surfin'" removes the charming garage rock production of the original and replaces it with a big hair metal guitar sound over Hip Hop Sample C from the Pro Tools library, but that still doesn't come close to matching the desecration of having John Stamos sing a (fleshed out in such a tasteless way) cover of "Forever." I get that the band had a close working relationship with Full House, appearing as guest stars several times, and I get that Stamos briefly functioned as the band's touring drummer, but man, even when I was 12 and barely knew who the Beach Boys were, I knew that Full House could only be enjoyed on a completely ironic level. The rendition is competent, but it just feels so gross that I can't treat it on the level.

* The originals are generally pretty bad, but the worst of the worst is clearly "Summer of Love," which has the worst opening ten seconds of any song I can think of and doesn't improve from there. I guess there might have been some level of tongue-in-cheek with this, but even when I try to view it with the strongest irony filter I can muster, I just can't get beyond Mike Love trying to rap or the presence of those record scratches. This song had been described to me in detail long before I first heard it, and I still wasn't adequately prepared. Did I also mention that it inexplicably decides to rip off "Some of Your Love," which itself wasn't an especially good song?

For all of the awfulness that saturates this album, it's still not quite the worst album I've ever heard. As unremarkable as they might be, I can still imagine a world where "Still Surfin'" or the title track could have sounded like something better than tacky nostalgia (maybe crossing the line to "only sorta tacky nostalgia"), and I do find moments of genuine enjoyment in them. I also think that, in the hands of another band, "Strange Things Happen" could have been something more than bland filler. More importantly, though, as bad as this album might be, at least it's not pretending to be something more than pop music; there's no misguided pomp and no misguided pretension to make things even worse.

Alas, "not the worst album I've ever heard" is pretty much the extent of the compliments I can offer it. It went out of print almost immediately (and in the process bankrupted their US distributor), and while I recommend hearing some of the tracks once or twice just for shock value, I can't recommend it for any more than that. When people talk about how much they hate Mike Love, this is the sort of thing that makes it justifiable.

Well, if I have to stand stubbornly as one of the last remaining true believers, then so be it. I've adored this album since initial release, and while I'm not sure that I would still rate it above Pet Sounds, it's still in close competition with Pet Sounds for my favorite Beach Boys/Wilson-related released product. While I certainly see the merits in the argument that the Smile Sessions boxset makes this one irrelevant, I nonetheless don't agree with the argument, and in order to explain why I need to address two important general points regarding the relationship of this album to the overall Smile arc.

Point one that's often mentioned in some way to diminish this album essentially states that, no matter good this album may sound, it can't live up to the "real thing" of The Smile Sessions simply because that album contained the collective efforts of The Beach Boys while this album contains the efforts of The Wondermints doing their absolute best to mimic the 1967 version of The Beach Boys. I do agree that the ideal version of any given track on this album would have consisted of Beach Boys and only Beach Boys, but the Smile Sessions set showed that, in many cases, there simply wasn't a version available of a given track that had a fleshed out version featuring The Beach Boys. Plus, as sacrilegious as such a statement might be, I really have a hard time seeing why the other Beach Boys and only the other Beach Boys are an essential component of an ideal version of Smile; aside from the vocal parts of Carl and Mike in "Good Vibrations," the Smile project had very few stretches that gave the opportunity to specific band members to have an iconic performance specifically tailored to their talents (for instance, anybody could have done that cool Dennis rap in the background of "Cabinessence"), and that doesn't even take into consideration how little enthusiasm everybody other than Brian had for the project as it wore on and on. Given the choice between some fully finished versions from the original band and a bunch of half-finished sketches (from a band whose enthusiasm for facilitating Brian's creative wanderings in this period became limited at best), on the one hand, and completely finished versions from start to finish from a band that sounds functionally equivalent to the original band (and which is clearly jump-out-of-their-clothes enthusiastic about the project), I'm going to take the latter. Smile may have been the Great Lost Beach Boys Album in name, but it was always the Great Lost Brian Wilson Album in its core, and in this case the loss of the other band members doesn't strike me as especially important.

The second point that typically comes up in regards to diminishing this album is that Brian Wilson at age 62 doesn't sound like Brian Wilson at age 25. Well, this is the point where my opinions on the album get really weird. I love Brian's old-man vocals on this album. Love them. Brian's vocals on this album are essential in terms of amplifying this project's unique place in music history as an album outside of time; the music might have originated in the late 1960s, but it's as if it got sucked into a rip in the space-time continuum a la something from The Twilight Zone, emerging on the other side with the music unaged but with the main vocal performer bearing the full brunt of the journey. Plus, while it's certainly not as much fun to hear old-man Brian Wilson struggle through "Surf's Up" (getting by only because he's drowned in backing vocals) as it was to hear young-man Brian Wilson or Carl Wilson back in the day, there are moments of emotional heft that come from hearing the songs with old-man vocals that certainly weren't present before. The strongest example of this new-found emotional heft appears almost right away; suddenly, "I've been in this town so long that back in the city I've been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long long time" becomes an acknowledgement (not orginally intended, but now dripping with meaning) of just how long in the tooth this overall project has become, and the later "I've been in this town so long / so long to the city ..." sounds so weary with Brian's old-man voice that the song ends up grabbing me more than it ever did with his younger voice. There are certainly many moments where hearing this Brian sing music that he had clearly originally intended for younger men becomes a little silly, but on the whole I find the trade of young-man Brian for old-man Brian to work for the album's benefit, and certainly not its detriment (even though one would certainly expect that such a trade could in no way work out).

Returning to the album itself, the album breaks into three suites, each of which centers around one of the major songs of the Smile project (part one features "Heroes and Villains," part two features "Surf's Up," and part three features "Good Vibrations"). This layout, in and of itself, betrays that the hypothetical 1967 Smile could never have contained exactly this material; this layout works on CD, but it wouldn't work on LP, simply because there's no clean way to divide the material over two sides without having a major imbalance in the lengths of the two sides (the eventual LP release of this album ended up making it a double album with the fourth side filled with bonus tracks). Regarding the first suite, while it closes in a triumphant manner with "Cabin Essence," it's clearly centered around "Heroes and Villains," simply because, in addition to including that track (as on The Smile Sessions, it's extended well beyond the more familiar version), it also features a good amount of material that had been considered for inclusion within "Heroes and Villains." The opening "Our Prayer" immediately segues into "Gee," an adaptation of part of an old doo-wop song, and these combine into what's essentially a long introduction to "Heroes and Villains." "Roll Plymouth Rock" (which had once been given the nonsensical title of "Do You Like Worms"), then, functions as the start of a long coda to "Heroes and Villains," as large chunks of it feature a harpsichord version of "Heroes and Villains" (and, in one of the variations, a series of nonsensical harmonies that awesomely create the image of a bicycle pedal going up and down). Of course, it also contains some lovely parts that have nothing to do with "Heroes and Villains," both in the lumbering section over distant piano (over tympani) and in the atmospheric Hawaiian section. Rounding out the suite are two more "H&V" leftovers, in "Barnyard" (insanely memorably enough and short enough to offset how bonkers it sounds when given a second thought) and "Old Master Painter" / "You Are My Sunshine" (which takes a brief cello version of the former and grafts it to a minor key version of the latter that makes me sad every time I hear it). Overall, I'd probably pick this as the weakest of the three suites, but it's still remarkable.

My favorite of the three suites is definitely the second one. "Surf's Up," regardless of the comedown in vocals, is still a rousing coda to the section, and it sounds great, but it's the three-song sequence that immediately precedes it where my heart ultimately lies. "Wonderful," it turns out, still sounds amazing when Brian and others don't purposely ruin it as on Smiley Smile; this harpsichord-laden tale of a girl sorting through her feelings towards God, her parents, and a boy, sounds great in The Smile Sessions and sounds great here. What comes next, though, absolutely annihilates the preliminary sketches of the versions from The Smile Sessions; "Song for Children" and "Child is the Father of the Man" take the album's "Teenage Symphony to God" core to its greatest heights, largely because of the backing vocals, and the moment where the music segues from the cheer of "Song for Children" into the atmospheric majesty of "Child is the Father of the Man" floors me every time. The brief orchestral prelude to "Surf's Up," over the minimalist piano, is a great touch as well.

The third suite may not have my heart to quite the same extent as the second one, but it's still a tremendous amount of fun. The opening medley of "I'm in Great Shape" (another leftover from "Heroes and Villains" that got moved into the first suite on The Smile Sessions), "I Wanna be Around" (an old song that Tony Bennett made famous in the early 60s) and "Workshop" (which had appeared during the fadeout of "Do it Again" on 20/20) makes almost no sense, but it's so nonsensical that I enjoy it greatly, and it makes for a terrific introduction to "Vega-Tables." As on The Smile Sessions, this is a fully fleshed-out version that goes far beyond the sketch of the Smiley Smile version, and the moment when "Mama Says" emerges as the song's middle 8 entertains me far too much every time. The suite also contains a great version of "Wind Chimes," where Wilson's vocals are particularly nice and where the eventual marimba/guitar part is so enjoyable that it's illegal in 37 states, but just as notable to me is "On a Holiday," sandwiched in between "Vega-tables" and "Wind Chimes." It's basically the version from The Smile Sessions (there called "Holidays"), fleshed out with vocals, but the addition of vocals, even if the lyrics are pure silliness, benefits the song tremendously, and the reprise of "Roll Plymouth Rock" near the end is just such a perfect moment.

As fine as the material before it might strike me, the following two tracks definitely kick the album into higher gear and help ensure that it gets the grade it ultimately does from me. "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" is every bit as bonkers as the version from The Smile Sessions, but it's also more intense, thanks in part to a stronger mix in the menacing guitar riff at the center, and I have to imagine that, with the combination of the guitar riff and the chaotic percussion and the manic slide whistles, it would have been an absolute show-stopper in live performance. The way the track interacts with the following "In Blue Hawaii," then, completely cracks me up, and I view the two tracks as an inseparable pair. "In Blue Hawaii" starts off with a lot of the chanting elements that would make it into "Cool, Cool Water," and the combination of these with Brian's lyrics over the chant (in context of what had just been heard in "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow") gives the sense of a really awful nightmare. Slowly, though, the dreamer starts to slowly rouse as sounds and senses start to permeate their consciousness, and in one of the slickest transitions from a nightmare sequence to a happy sequence that I could possibly imagine, the dreamer snaps open their eyes and realizes that they haven't found their way into the depths of hell, but instead they've just fallen asleep besides a pool in Hawaii. The instrumental underpinning of the track closely follows that of "Love to Say Dada," and while the lyrics aren't amazing, they're perfectly adequate to the purposes of the track, and I enjoy the main song tremendously.

Finally, there's the matter of the version of "Good Vibrations" that closes the album. I would never be so daft as to say that a 2004 version of "Good Vibrations" could exceed the original version (a strong contender for greatest song of the 60s) or the version on The Smile Sessions (which restores the "hum-dee-dum" section, and in the process possibly becomes better); if nothing else, the vocals from Carl and Mike are so important to that song that getting rid of them in favor of Brian and assorted Wondermints will definitely hurt more than with other material on the album. And yet ... aren't the lyrics here better for the song? I'm not a huge fan of Tony Asher overall, but these lyrics, about feeling a sort of unexplainable cosmic connection with another person you've only just met, fit better with the chorus than the lyrics about feeling a connection with somebody just because you like some aspects of their appearance. Plus, it may just be a small touch, but I LOVE the "and I'm picking up" lead-in that Brian throws out before each iterations of the chorus. So ... yeah, I'm going to give this consideration for the title of best track on the album, and I'm going to consider it in at least the same ballpark as the original.

This album is awesome, and there's nothing else like it. It has warts, no doubt about it, and I don't necessarily think that somebody reading my thoughts on this album would feel converted towards it if they had strong skepticism towards it, but to me, a grade this high seems like an absolute no-brainer. Nowadays, it's a little difficult to come across it, but if you somehow find a copy (maybe in a used CD store after somebody felt they didn't need it now that they had The Smile Sessions), you should absolutely grab it and give it a listen or five. Maybe, in 2067, when people are starting to mark the 100th anniversary of Smile, the idea of the greatness of this album will seem ridiculous, but I'm willing to land on the wrong side of history for this.

I would love to say that the ultimate decision by Mike to ask Brian and Al to rejoin the band (along with Mike, Bruce and David; it would have been hilarious if they'd asked Blondie and Ricky to come by but I guess that was a step too far) for its 50th anniversary stemmed from artistic considerations, from a desire to right some of the wrongs that resulted in their last few albums nosediving as badly as they did ... but nah, everybody involved did it for the money. With that said, I admit that I'm a little surprised that they even bothered to go into the studio, rather than just focusing solely on the live touring aspect of things. The main songwriter from the band this time around is Brian, with Mike getting a smattering of additional credits, but a large number of the additional credits belong to one Joe Thomas (a frequent collaborator with and producer of Brian, and occasionally involved in litigation with and against Brian), and the closing song even features a co-credit from Jon Bon Jovi. In terms of overall approach, well, the band mostly plays it as safe as it possibly can; the nostalgia exercise aspect isn't quite as offensive here as it could be on previous albums, simply because the nostalgia isn't body-slammed into the tackiest aspects of contemporary production, but this album is very much interested in living up to the idea of the band's 60s music, though without showing the kind of youthful energy necessary for a proper replication of it. So in a way, this album suffers from the same sorts of problems as 15 Big Ones or most of the albums that followed it, only in a more subtle and less overtly tacky way.

So with all of that said ... ehn, it's fine, and there's a nice atmospheric suite at the end to make it feel like somewhat more than an early 60s retro exercise. The two singles (featured in live performance and on the accompanying live album), the title track and "Isn't it Time," are both perfectly pleasant exercises in memorable Brian/Al-heavy harmonizing (aside from Brian, Al is easily the most important person to the album's sound), and if they're both somewhat on autopilot they still show that Brian's autopilot still worked effectively. Love's "Daybreak Over the Ocean" is far closer to "Sumahama" than to "Kokomo," and it easily would have been the best song on either Still Cruisin' or Summer in Paradise (which doesn't say much but it at least says something). And finally, the four song suite at the end, while not exactly on par with anything from Pet Sounds or Smile, is nonetheless very lovely and gives the album a clear reason to exist. "Strange World" is a nice 3-minute piano ballad, "From There to Back Again" is a VERY nice Jardine-sung piano-ballad (there are a couple of bits of autotune that become apparent but only very slightly), "Pacific Coast Highway" is a harmony-heavy reprise extension of parts of the opening instrumental "Think About the Days" (which is clearly tapping into the "Our Prayer" vibe) and "Summer's Gone," regardless of the Bon Jovi co-credit, is an extremely lovely and sparse way to end the album, with a bit of Pet Sounds-lite atmosphere that can't help but make me smile sadly despite my most cynical impulses to resist.

There are quite a few other songs, and for the most part I find myself enjoying them when on and completely forgetting about them as soon as they're done (though I've gotta say, "Beaches in Mind" has an odd faux-swagger that I find kinda off-putting, and if it had the bad production of a typical Summer in Paradise number I'd probably hate it). Sadly, the same can largely be said for the album as a whole, and while it gives the band the chance to end its run of studio albums with something other than an epic disaster, that doesn't make it a major success. I mean, people tended to offer this album the praise "Their best since Love You" pretty freely, but I wouldn't even go that far; I definitely like L.A. (Light Album) more than this one, even if few other people would agree with me. It's decent enough, but I can't imagine ever feeling in the mood to listen to large chunks of it once again.

For the most part, if the song had been a hit for the band, it makes it onto this set, but there are some nice surprises that show the band felt willing to explore parts of its catalogue for this tour that would make the concert more than just a greatest hits show. The early 70s albums, in particular, get represented pretty well here; Sunflower gets "Forever" (with the band playing along to Dennis' pre-recorded vocals; they do something similar with "God Only Knows" and Carl's vocals) and "Add Some Music to Your Day" (well, you can't win them all), Surf's Up gets "Disney Girls" (which takes on a whole different air from somebody in their 70s than from somebody much younger), Carl and the Passions (!!) gets "Marcella" (Brian takes on lead vocals in place of Carl) and "All This is That" (now THAT is a quality deep cut), and Holland gets both "Sail On, Sailor" and the "California" part of the "California Saga" suite. Beyond these deeper cuts, though, there's a general sense of care taken in how the performances are presented in the overall context of the album (and I presume the actual show), such as with the string of car songs that end the first disc ("Little Deuce Coupe," "409," "Shut Down," I Get Around" in a row) or the way they kick off the second half with the Pet Sounds title track.

There are too many nice moments on the album to include them all, and with 41 tracks I'm not going to try (I would feel remiss, though, if I didn't mention that letting David Marks take on lead vocals in "Getcha Back" was pretty inspired, even though he hadn't been part of the band when it was recorded). There are some tracks that make me roll my eyes, of course (the inclusion of "Be True to Your School," "Add Some Music to Your Day" and "Kokomo" is enough for me to round down the rating), and this album ultimately adds little to the band's overall legacy, but it fully justifies the band's reunion, and I'm glad it exists. This is only for serious fans, but serious fans will want this.