#0052: The Beach Boys - Today! [***]

Remember how flinging flanging ridonculous the Bee Gees looked and sounded in 1978?  I poured scorn on that disco crap from the ivory tower I'd painstakingly built over my 9 year lifespan.  Today, Night Fever and Stayin Alive are among my favourites.  Things change us and in turn change the way we see things.  

The Bee Gees weren't doing anything new though it seems.  They were just copying the Beach Boys and the Beach Boys may well have nicked their falsetto style from the soul singers.  I'm not in this for the history.  All I'm saying is that I thought they both sounded stupid when I first heard them.

I've never been a big fan of the Beach Boys but over the years I've come to want to listen more closely to what Brian Wilson achieved having heard about him through friends who were a lot more interested.

This album kinda reminds me of the Phil Spector Christmas album a while back.  Its fat production and reverb-drenched drums put me particularly in mind of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.  The other Christmas connection I get is that feeling I described before; of hearing what is peaceful and/or happy music but being nevertheless over-swept by some underlying melancholy.  

If you listen to the words, these tales are dripping with sadness.  From the vexatious uncertainty of When I Grow Up To Be A Man to the repentant self-castigation of She Knows Me So Well these songs ooze regret, jealousy, confusion and despair - the main food groups of rock and roll.

Now, you can't listen to a Beach Boys album without talking about the harmonies.  This is apparently their 8th album and I don't know what the previous 7 sounded like but the chords the 3 and 4 voice parts form throughout are nothing like anything I've heard from the sample group to date.  Daringly dissonant on occasion, I can only marvel at what was either a profoundly able inner ear or an insatiable appetite for trial and error.

In other news, directly before making this album Brian Wilson took up smoking pot.

Towards the end of the album, the levee of levity breaks and the waters of that thinly shrouded sadness pour through.  Even the harmonies drop away by the very last track, written by Brian Wilson's brother Dennis.  Interestingly, all the tracks on side 2 were written by Brian Wilson except In The Back Of My Mind (Dennis), whereas the first side was all collaborative.  Can it then be assumed that the influence of Mike Love on side 1 is what stopped this from being a giant, wallowing miseryfest?    

I vowed I would not give half stars but I really think - for the harmonies alone - this is worth more than 3.  But I don't think it's good enough for 4.  I don't think I'll come back to it that often.  I've gone back and forth on this and here's why I've stuck with 3.  

The very last track isn't a song.  It's a recording of them sitting around chatting and eating.  It's...self indulgent wank.  Maybe some fans would be entertained by hearing the band talking about being on tour, how many mistakes they made, blah blah.  It does lighten the mood so that shows some self awareness that the order of these songs is taking the listener on a downer.  

But I expected more.  

This is a band that released FOUR albums the previous year, a band that after this offering would release two more albums in the same year.  I think that's a prolific enough output that if they needed filler material they could just have written another song instead of leaving the tape running while they jerk each other off over french fries.  Is that asking too much?