I have always struggled with this album. I have for years heard how greeat and important it was, but not growing up with it, I never understood it. I can say after listening to it several times over the past few weeks, that I get it. It is ellusive at first, I think because unlike what you expect from them, this is a pretty dark record. Don't get me wrong, it's not Morrisey dark, but for Brian Wilson and the gang... it's dark. Understanding Brian's dive into reclusion and depression really helps to understand this record better. It is also the album that influenced Paul McCartny to write Sgt. Pepper's, so that alone makes it pretty imortant.
Aside from the darkness of the lyrics, there is also a complete disregard to using conventional recording techniques, instruments or even the Beach Boys themselves for that matter. Brian just manged to use the right things in all of the right places. Form bicycle bells to Theramins he never sounded contrived. It really is amazing when you start to really break down the parts in this record how beatifully arranged it is. It is even more amazing that on the first few listens you don't even take notice how unconventional it is. That is it's greatness. Brian Wilson used anything and everything that defied conventions of the time and came up with a reording that SOUNDS conventional. It is almost like Frank Zappa taking all types of bizarre things and making music with them. Except that Frank is an aquired taste that takes some getting used to because it sounds so different at first almost discordant. Brian on the other hand comes out with a pop record that you really need to pay attention to to even hear its unconventionality.
Genius.
1 Comments
Apr 20, 2014, 6:09:37 AM
dean squishman - I have only ever heard the stuff they play on the radio from this album over the years. I always heard how important and influential this album is and I agree after listening to it as a whole that it's influence echoed through the decades---most notable in my mind to the resurgence of lounge exotica with bands like Pink Martini. I love this genre. The title track--Pet sounds---is clearly a nod to composers like Martin Denny that was happening in the 10 years leading up to pet sounds, not to mention Herb Alpert who was already making a big noise at this time. It makes me want to drive a convertible down the pacific coast highway with my lover's hair blowing in the wind on the way to a coctail party at Hugh Hefner's place. The album has a very friendly and sympathetic sound. This is an appealing thing to me and points to a time when people would start listening to music on head phones as a wide spread practice rather than blaring through speakers in a shared and thus distracting way. An album this inventive and all inclusive from a band once considered too controversial to play the fourth of July celebration in Washington DC by Ronald Reagan 's secretary of the interior James Watt---deserves to be at least in the top ten of this list.