52. The Beach Boys – The Beach Boys Today! (1965)

Tracks: Do You Wanna Dance // Good to My Baby // Don’t Hurt My Little Sister // When I Grow Up (To Be A Man) // Help Me, Rhonda // Dance, Dance, Dance // Please Let Me Wonder // I’m So Young // Kiss Me Baby // She Knows Me Too Well // In the Back of My Mind // Bull Session with “Big Daddy” // The Girl from New York City

Review:

I like the Beach Boys! And why? Because they were a very good band. They had delightful harmonies, they had oddly-structured melodies, and they weren’t afraid (at least, under the management of Brain Wilson) to throw rock to the wind in favour of big, strange, all-encompassing pop. On this album, they start to move on from Chuck Berry-derived rock & roll and into the realm of Phil Spector, Les Baxter, Burt Bacharach and Bachman Turner Overdrive. Well, maybe not that last one.

I am biased in my fondness for the Beach Boys, in that they were in certain ways the soundtrack to my life. I suppose they are an omnipresence in the Western musical world, but that doesn’t change the deep personal resonance attendant upon listening to my granddad sing “Barbara Ann” to my sister while setting her on his knee. Nor can in tarnish the memory of solving year five maths problems to the sounds of “Surfin’ USA”, punctuated at regular intervals by the intonations of the voice actor declaring the sums and how long we had in which to get them right. And looking about at the current Indiescape, with its ten thousand bands all desperate to resurrect Surf’s Up, one can only feel a sense of vindication coupled with a deep and penetrating weariness. Move on, you jerks! I want it all for myself. I own “Wind Chimes” to the depths of my jealous heart.

Putting this aside, this is quite a good record. “Help Me, Rhonda” is very beautiful. The first half of the album boasts up-beat pop numbers, all of them extremely enjoyable, while the second half veers into nostalgic melancholia that would come to define the best of the band’s later work. If I am correct (and I’m probably not) this is the album where Brian Wilson locked himself away in the studio and decided he’d tour no more. Even if this wasn’t actually the album where he did it, such was a bold and well-chosen move that would send deep quivers down the spine of the pop-sonic landscape.

If I wanted to say something beyond the vague ululations of reminiscence, then I would declare that “Do You Wanna Dance” is a kick-ass bit for dancing, what with the explosion of the chorus*; that “When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)” asks some hard questions and has some soft melodies; that “Dance, Dance, Dance” has a kick-ass riff and a nice descending melody; that “Please Let Me Wonder” is so delicate and pretty as to be heart-breaking; that the same goes doubly so for “Kiss Me Baby”, which is almost painfully beautiful; and that “She Knows Me Too Well” basically invented the 1970s (ABBA, the Carpenters, Chicago... ain’t nothin’ wrong with that).

It’s not Pet Sounds, but then what is? What this is is very, very good.

A golden victory for squares in the realm of pop.

8.5/10

*the Ramones did it better.