How I got through uncertain times, with a little help from The Beach Boys.

During this goddamned hellscape that is the year 2020 I was lucky enough to be working for a few weeks during lock-down before being furloughed. During this time I came across Todd In the Shadows retrospective video on The Beach Boys' 1991 flop 'Summer in Paradise. One of the best videos  in his brilliant 'Trainwreckords' video series. Summer in Paradise was The Beach Boys lowest point, with Brian Wilson AWOL and Dennis long gone Mike Love took the reins for a horribly produced stain on the

iconic bands reputation. This was the only time time i felt angry because of any of these videos and I spontaneously decided to hear some of the good stuff. I gave their 1971 album 'Surfs up' and found the famously chipper surf bros had made a downbeat album of progressive baroque pop. The deliciously dreary 'Don't go near the water' is a lament of environmental destruction, that subtly reworks The Beach Boys whole persona. Elsewhere is Brian Wilson's bizarre 'take a load of your feet', Mike Love's odd Blues rock Anti-protest song 'Student Demonstration Time'. Carl Wilson's 'Feel Flows', and 'Long Promised road' steal the show, which may be the most beautiful song The Beach Boys ever made, if not for Brian's gorgeously haunted piano ballad 'Surfs Up'. Which gives a glimpse of what his fabled lost masterpiece 'Smile' might have been. 

I was hooked. Next up I tried their 1973 effort 'Holland' which is another oddly downbeat record, which i mostly remember for Mike Love and Al Jardine's epic California saga. Obviously being in Amsterdam made them homesick but what they came up with was an epic love letter to their home-state and painting a vivid picture of its natural beauty.  I tried to get into Dennis Wilson's classic 'Pacific Ocean Blue' but instead fell in love with the boy's 1970 masterpiece Sunflower. Which may have flopped on release but now sounds like peak hippy material. 'Sunflower is literally the sound of the 60's morphing into the 70's as Brian's' 'This Whole World' and 'Deirdre' seem incredibly sappy next to the raw beauty of Dennis Wilson's 'Got to know the woman' and 'Forever'. The student was becoming the master as with 'Forever', Dennis had written a love song for the ages, a heartfelt and achingly beautiful ballad (later to be ruined by John Stamos). That's not to say Brian was totally out of step, 'All I Wanna Do' is a blueprint for dream-pop and 'Cool glass of Water' another recovered 'Smile' highlight. Overall Sunflower is far from the perfection of Pet Sounds, its an oddly uneven yet relentlessly positive lost gem from the hippy era. I love it for it's flaws rather than because of them, if you hear any other Beach Boys album than Pet Sounds, make it this one. 

I discovered that you can tell how good a Beach Boys album is by how miserable Mike Love is on the cover. which made 20/20 my next stop. A mix of off cuts and Beatles rip offs clumsily mixed together while Brian was in rehab, that features an un-credited tune by none other than Charles Manson. The fact that it's still a good album says a lot about how great The Beach Boys were in the late 60's. 1968's 'Friends' is another lost gem, a mix of mostly unfinished bittersweet country-ish tunes that still echo the slacker aesthetic that Mac Demarco perfected decades later, much like Wild Honey and Smiley Smile it's almost punk in how little The Beach Boys seemed to give a shit. The latter being an attempt to recreate Brian Wilson's 'Teenage symphony to god' in his basement in 2 weeks on home recording equipment. Yup, They really tried to make the greatest album never made while stoned in Brian's Basement. It's strange to say the least, but it does feature 'Good Vibrations'. By this point I'd given Pet Sounds another listen. It's pretty much the perfect record and very dear to my heart, yet there's nothing much I can say here that hasn't been said before. The few pre Pet Sounds albums I gave a spin are fine, but only if you're really curious or after the hits. The Christmas Album is to be avoided at all costs. 

By this point I finally got why Pacific Ocean Blue is a masterpiece. By 1977 Dennis Wilson was burnt out. He'd left the group that had made him famous and put together the ultimate break up album. Pacific Ocean Blue stands alongside any of the classic singer-songwriter records of the 70's. It opens with the epic gospel infused 'River Song' and features a mix of blues rock, minimalist piano ballads and shades of progressive rock. The sudden jarring key change in the middle of 'time' is unforgettable. Pacific Ocean Blue is the work of a broken man trying to piece himself back together, a mature, complex and sophisticated record that was sadly the last we'd see from him. Meanwhile his brother Brian was dicking around on synthesizers for his Love You record. Many claim that it's the last great Beach Boys record, I'd say it was the last weird Beach Boys record. Either way it's all downhill from there. And with Brian Wilson farting around on a Moog my Beach Boys phase ended. It had been 3 weeks of listening to nothing else and it was time for me too move on and binge Stranger Things like a normal person. At some point I'll give the mammoth Smile Sessions a try, and maybe some more of the 60's records too. Brian's recent solo effort No Pier Pressure is a fairly solid late career effort too. 

I'm still in a difficult position right now, but i can at least say thank you to the Wilson's and company for helping me through the first leg lockdown.