Music – Page 107 – Rock Salted

Willie Nelson – The Words Don’t Fit the Picture

Willie Nelson – The Words Don’t Fit the Picture RCA Victor LSP-4653 (1972)

Willie Nelson languished in near obscurity as a solo artist through the 1960s and early 1970s, despite recognition penning a number of hits for others. In his early days he conformed to the whims of his producers, with a typical “Nashville” sound. As time went on, he — like a lot of Motown stars like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder — sought to assert himself more in the recording process. His vocals changed. Rather than holding notes for a long time and adding a lot of vibrato like a pop crooner, he sang ahead of the beat more forcefully and sang with more clipped, staccato phrasing. The backing vocals, string backing, and other Nashville trappings fell by the wayside too, and Willie’s accomplished guitar playing featured more prominently — characterized by his trademark pauses interrupted by staccato runs on his iconic converted classical acoustic guitar.

The Words Don’t Fit the Picture is something of a forgotten item in the Nelson catalog — AMG gives it only a one-sentence review, RYM has no reviews and only a few ratings and it’s not even mentioned in Graeme Thomson’s biography Willie Nelson: The Outlaw. It was released around the time Nelson moved to the Austin, Texas area and hired a new cutthroat manager from the rock world, before his big break with Shotgun Willie. It has elements of the Nashville sound, but also plenty of moments that foreshadow the ways Nelson would breakthrough to superstardom in a few years. He wrote or co-wrote everything here. Though it would be hard to call any of these standouts, there’s not a bad tune to be found. And this set is nothing if not eclectic. Nelson’s wide interests in jazz, western swing, traditional pop, soul, etc. subtly make their presence felt. In essence, Willie takes the Nashville sound as far out as it can go, right to its furthest boundaries. Take “London,” for instance, which sounds like a countrified version of a beatnik monologue off a Tom Waits album.

This may be a transitional effort, but it wonderfully captures a lot of strengths of the different elements at play. It also shows that Nelson was certainly a professional, delivering crisp songs in an assured manner, even when they have “typical Nashville” written all over them. Listeners who can forget about where this stands in relation to other things Nelson has done may find that this is simply a damn fine country album.

Willie Nelson – The Sound in Your Mind

Willie Nelson – The Sound in Your Mind Columbia PC-34092 (1976)

Willie’s proper follow-up to his smash success Red Headed Stranger is another winner. He sounds perfectly at ease with himself, ready to let this album unfold slowly. Martin Scorsese once recounted his career in the 1970s and 80s by noting that no one had time for a personal cinema in the 80s. What was true for film also held true for music. The intimate and frequently sad, downer themes of a lot of 70s music largely disappeared in the 80s. That’s one reason The Sound in Your Mind stands out, because this sort of album wasn’t being made anymore a few years later. That’s a damn shame too. Because Willie does a lot of intimate songs here that touch on many poignant, lonely sentiments in a warm and comfortable way that found no space in public consciousness in the coming Thatcher-Reagan era.

One of Willie Nelson’s best qualities was the eclectic musical interest he had, and the ways he could bring his varied interests to bear on his records with a light and never overbearing touch. This collection of old standards and new performances of some of his own best-known (but old) songwriting is presented with spare and unobtrusive accompaniment. There is a late-night aura over everything. A small but rich assortment of pedal steel, piano and prominent bass give help keep this from settling into too much of a same-y sounding rut (what The Troublemaker threatened to succumb to).

If any one thing stands out most about The Sound in Your Mind it has to be Nelson’s vocals. His vocal delivery evolved over time. By the mid-70s he reached his peak. It might be fair to say this album was his very peak as a vocalist. That voice, with its natural Texas twang and ahead of the beat—and sometimes behind—attack, is an irrevocable force, as immediately recognizable as that of any singer of the 20th century. By this point he used vibrato much more willingly than a decade prior. This album is loaded with great songs and performances, like “I’d Have to Be Crazy,” “That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day),” “A Penny for Your Thoughts,” “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time),” and “The Healing Hands of Time.” This is another great one from a stretch where it seemed like Willie couldn’t go wrong.

Willie Nelson – Phases and Stages

Willie Nelson – Phases and Stages Atlantic SD 7291 (1974)

If a thing is really worth doing, it may take fits and starts and many failed attempts to finally get it done in spite of the tremendous inertia that resists changes of direction in life. That describes both the process of making Phases and Stages and its thematic subject matter. Willie Nelson worked on this album for a number of years before its release. Many of the songs had been written long ago, and he had recorded early versions for RCA that weren’t released. When he went to Atlantic Records, he had to obtain clearance from RCA before he could re-record the songs for this album. While Willie liked to record with his touring band, the plain fact is that most of those musicians were of fairly modest abilities. Producer Jerry Wexler brought Willie to Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama, home of many great soul recordings, to create the album. Rather than the touring band, Nelson is supported by crack session men. It’s the finely-honed abilities of the supporting musicians that brings life to Willie’s music here. He put them on the spot, perhaps forgetting he was the only one who had lived with these tunes for years. But preventing anyone from settling into the familiar is a perfect match for the tone of the material. Phases and Stage is about the dissolution of a marriage, with side one taking the woman’s perspective and side two the man’s. This is Nelson’s second concept album, the first being Yesterday’s Wine. Johnny Cash had pioneered the use of concept albums in country music. With precedent behind him, Willie makes this one work. What gives this album its strength is its ability to tap into the mundane aspects of a romantic breakup with poetic grace. The proper songs are broken up by a 20-30 second recurring theme, “Phases and Stages.” It’s hard to point to any faults on this one, save perhaps some people’s desire to skip the recurring theme. Phases and Stages is one of Nelson’s most durable albums, among his very finest — maybe even his very finest.

Willie Nelson – Shotgun Willie

Willie Nelson – Shotgun Willie Atlantic SD 7262 (1973)

After relocating to the Austin, Texas area and taking up residence at the Armadillo World HQ bar, Willie Nelson dropped Shotgun Willie on the world, his first album for the new country division of New York’s Atlantic Records. Nelson had been around for a long time in the music business, but this record was different. At the Armadillo, he had brought together conservative (redneck) country audiences and liberal (hippie) audiences. A more telling description though is that he tried to drag rock fans into the country fold without alienating his base of country music fans. He tried and succeeded. He also adopted a new look inspired by Leon Russell, with long hair, an earring and a short, slightly unkempt beard. His first offering for Atlantic, as the label’s biggest country act, broke from anything he had done before. For what it’s worth, he never tried to repeat it, either. This was a record infused with rock sensibilities, bolstered by an occasional horn section. It was his first recorded in New York City. Actually, the first tracks recorded ended up populating his later-released gospel album The Troublemaker, with the Shotgun Willie material recorded toward the end of the studio sessions. His regular touring “Family Band” is present, but augmented by Doug Sahm (Sir Douglas Quintet) and his band, Johnny Gimble, and both Waylon Jennings and his wife Jessi Colter. His sister Bobbie joins the band for the first time on piano, and she proved an invaluable asset through the years. Even troubled soul/R&B visionary Donny Hathaway gets an arranging credit. Willie by this point had completely shed the crooning style of his earliest recordings. Though it’s worth noting that Willie’s vocals would continue to evolve, as would his guitar playing. “She’s Not For You” ends up being the most telling performance in terms of they way Nelson would refine his distinctive clipped, start/stop singing and guitar style. There are some great tunes here, like “Whiskey River,” which Nelson would almost religiously use as a concert opener for, well, forever. It’s the prominent drum beat (much heavier on the bass kick drum than usual), electric guitar (sans a lot of slide or twang), and horns (in true Atlantic R&B style) that allow this album to completely break from the mold of Nashville-styled country music. It also has an upbeat tone that contrasts to the typical collection of sad sack country weepers that would have been more typical of the day. No need for a tear in your beer to enjoy it. This album garnered Nelson his first real taste of success, his best-selling to date. He was also getting recognized as a peer by the biggest acts in music, and not just those in country music. His days of being considered a second (or third) class performer were now over. Willie had some more good things in store, with a number of great albums delivered in the coming years. But his road to superstardom took its biggest turn right here. The take-home lesson is that the folks in New York knew how to record better music than those in Nashville. Willie, and his new manager Neil Reshen, worked hard to get the opportunity to be the guy who crossed over first.

Scott Walker – ‘Til the Band Comes in

Scott Walker – ‘Til the Band Comes In Philips 6308 035 (1970)

‘Til the Band Comes In is a transitional album. Unfortunately, it finds Scott Walker transitioning from the artistic triumph of Scott 4 and his other earlier solo efforts to the crass commercialism of his mid-1970s output. Despite its unevenness, the best material is among the man’s very finest and too good to pass up. It all starts fine enough. “Prologue” opens the album with sweeping strings that work quite effectively drawing in listeners. “Little Things (That Keep Us Together)” is propelled with an odd meter (5/4). Walker’s delivery of “Joe” bears an astonishing resemblance to Jack Jones. Then “Thanks for Chicago Mr. James” arrives, building slowly with prescient glockenspiel chimes toward peaks that rush past in a dramatic fashion few but Scott Walker could muster. It is the pinnacle of the album. That is both the good news and the bad news. While the album has its strengths, its flaws start to become apparent when Esther Ofarim rather than Walker sings the next song “Long About Now”. It’s not that her performance is poor, but that she doesn’t have the same nuance and presence — she’s a bit like a stuffy, quavering version of Karen Carpenter, perhaps even comparable to Vashti Bunyan or the young Marianne Faithfull. The guest vocal is doubly unfortunate because Walker’s voice was really in its finest form entering the early seventies, so any lost opportunity to hear him seems like a small tragedy. As the album progresses, something else becomes apparent. The songwriting isn’t always there. The lyrics can be too blunt and the musical concepts sometimes feel like they revisit areas Walker has already explored, but with less compelling results this time around. The overly affected “Time Operator” and the forced, trite “Cowbells Shakin” come to mind as the low points. They are broken up by the bawdy cabaret number “Jean the Machine”, which, though a novelty song, does keep the pace moving (and that’s not to mention that it expresses sympathy for a “commie spy” during the Cold War). The album does pick up a bit in the title track and the stirring “War Is Over (Epilogue)”, the latter having a shimmering grandiosity worthy of pause. The cover “Stormy” is most definitely passable, though the last part of the album, post-epilogue, comes across as filler. Wally Stott arranged most of the album, but Peter Knight arranged the last third — all covers.

Most of this album is fine, fine music. Scott Walker does achieve something here. Yet somewhere along the line, something slips from his fingers. In some ways it’s a sign of the times, as the deepest material perfectly reflects a sense of nervous, incomplete satisfaction with the changing world, echoing the way Hunter S. Thompson wrote about the end of the Sixties, looking west with the right kind of eyes and almost seeing the high-water mark where the wave finally broke and rolled back. But ‘Til the Band Comes In can feel like something neglected or unfinished, propped up at times. It is as if a desperate conservative streak overcomes Walker as a specter of spiritual and physical weariness arises. Rather than articulating the state of the world through his eyes he’s just caught up in the menial aspects of getting by. His immediate path forward would be downhill. This would be his last album to feature his own songwriting for some years. Of course, hindsight has shown that he came back as strong as ever later on.

New York Dolls – Dancing Backward in High Heels

New York Dolls – Dancing Backward in High Heels 429 Records FTN17813 (2011)

Long live New York Dolls. If the original band took early 1960s girl group and Brill building pop, blues and early rock and spun it out into a rocking yet brilliantly simply thing called glam, then the new band has found a way here to take many of the same influences and put them together in an entirely different way. Guitar solos? Forget them. Have some sax breaks and keyboards instead. Most of the songs are new ones by David Johansen and Syl Sylvain. But best to check the liner notes to confirm, because you won’t believe me. This stuff passes quite effectively as the genuine article of early 60s New York pop. Is that where they are dancing backwards to? Yeah, things trail off a bit toward the end. But damn if this isn’t a fun little record. A testament to music that never loses its appeal, and to those who can go on making it forever if they care enough.

The Mekons – Fear and Whiskey

The Mekons – Fear and Whiskey Sin Record Co. SIN 001 (1985)

By the time the 1980s rolled around, there were decades of recorded music widely available in the Western World. This remarkable technology sort of raised the bar for allowing great performances to reach wider audiences. Others have noted the dark side too, with regional peculiarities eventually giving way to fairly homogeneous musical culture, and with ordinary people less musically literate–they didn’t have to perform themselves to regularly hear music any longer. So, in that sometimes claustrophobic setting, it made sense that musicians would begin to look back and recombine the various elements already floating around. Enter The Mekons. Originally part of the punk scene, they took a brief hiatus and then came back as something different. Often described as “cow punk”, they kept elements of punk but were adding country music to it. Really, they added a whole lot more than just country. But country was a type of music increasingly associated with uneducated rural and working class people, with conservative values, and punks didn’t always fit that description. The Mekons proved it could be seamlessly incorporated into an urban, educated, left-leaning band’s music. This album holds a special place in the hearts of many listening to college radio in the day, though the follow-up The Edge of the World is arguably even better. It’s an amalgam of all sorts of things, with “Psycho Cupid (Danceband on the Edge of Time)” drawing some elements of the post-punk offered by English bands like Swell Maps and Essential Logic. The use of drum machines and melodica are reminiscent of The The. Lots of the punchy numbers on side two recalled the punkish celtic folk of The Pogues. But there is plenty of anthemic rock here too (“Hard to Be Human Again,” “Last Dance”). The irreverent, eclectic approach evokes, of all things, Headquarters-type Monkees albums. What it all meant was that there was something to be found looking back, taking bits and pieces of the past and pulling them together, holding none of it too sacred to be meddled with. This is a good album to hear just about anytime.

U2 – Achtung Baby

U2 – Achtung Baby Island 314-510 347-2 (1991)

U2: the band music geeks love to hate. Achtung Baby is one of the best reasons to legitimately hate the band. They never were original. As at least one other critic has noted, their early output was basically a warmed-over version of Echo and The Bunnymen — though in that U2 did manage to write some great and very accessible post-punk tunes. As the 1980s progressed, and their fortunes continued to rise, their music became increasingly dreamy, romanticized and airy. This was fine enough for The Joshua Tree, but it was also OVER with that album. Rattle and Hum had a few decent songs, but the sheer pretentiousness of it all was unbearable. With the dawn of the 1990s, and the rise of “alternative rock,” U2 was in a bit of a predicament. They weren’t exactly that kind of a band. Well, no problem! They would become that band, or at least pretend to become that kind of band. This proved to be the defining moment for U2. They could always be called upon to chase whatever ridiculous fad took hold of mainstream pop rock. Sure, Achtung Baby has superb production. Off in the background, it might even sound pleasant enough. But on a closer inspection, it reveals itself to be about as phony a record as you could find. In some ways, it was unsurprising that over a decade later the band would take a lot of flack for avoiding taxes in Ireland by moving its music publishing operation to The Netherlands, all the while campaigning for global celebrity “causes” that tend to be undermined back home by their tax sheltering/evasion schemes (to the extent the campaigning had any validity to begin with).

Frontman Bono is of course an easy target for the ire of U2-haters. He fits perfectly one of Dostoevsky’s great put-downs from Crime and Punishment (1866): “He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.” Achtung Baby is Bono’s “emperor has no clothes” moment. “Even Better Than the Real Thing?” Ha! Fat chance.

Elvis Presley – Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley – Elvis Presley RCA Victor LPM-1254 (1956)

It is impossible to consider the state of American social fabric in the mid Twentieth Century without factoring in Elvis. The magic of Elvis’ early career was that he was this “other” when it came to the characteristically straight-laced 1950s mainstream culture. He took just about every element of unacceptable subculture and threw it together in a seamless, integrated package. C.A. Swanson & Sons introduced the “TV Brand Frozen Dinner” in the 1950s, and it featured a complete meal separated into divided compartments. Take that as a metaphor for the era. Elvis represented all the food commingling, a stew that crossed all the boundaries and dividing walls. There were poor, rural, hillbilly country elements, there were bits of raucous blues and r&b, and more, and it all came together as this new thing people called rock ‘n roll. The music drew from black and white culture at a time when ugly Jim Crow segregation still ruled. But this music was a powerful shot across the bow of the status quo, a warning sign that segregation and the thinking behind it didn’t work. Some truck driver kid from Memphis crossed over. And his undeniable charisma and energy just didn’t leave room for doubt that the most compelling argument was on the side of a new (younger) generation and their new way of thinking. When Elvis famously went on the Ed Sullivan TV show and his gyrating hips couldn’t be shown on camera while he danced and performed because of what they suggested, it is telling that Sullivan still had Presley on, because there was simply no denying that he had something compelling to offer that people identified with. Sullivan had no choice but to accept it. Elvis wasn’t trying to wage a cultural war. But the size of his talent, like that of Louis Armstrong a generation earlier, transformed the cultural fabric. He represented the most successful kind of revolutionary: one that almost naively didn’t recognize or seek change but instead suddenly and completely offered a viable alternative that left the old ways obsolete. They call those paradigm shifts.

Elvis had begun his career with the tiny but now legendary Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. But as Presley started to gain some attention, label owner Sam Phillips sold his contract to RCA Victor in late November 1955 for $40,000 (Phillips made a fortune by investing that money in the new Holiday Inn hotel chain). RCA producer Steve Sholes took Presley to Nashville and began recording songs. “Heartbreak Hotel” was released as a single, and after Elvis made a series of appearances on television for The Dorsey Brothers’ “Stage Show” the single became a smash hit. A few weeks later, Presley’s debut long-player Elvis Presley was released. The rest, as they say, was history.

This album was remarkable in that the LP format was still a new prospect. There were no accepted formulas for how it might work for rock and roll music, if at all. Singles were still the dominant medium. It featured a few leftover recordings from Sun Records (“I Love You Because,” “Just Because,” “Trying to Get to You,” “Blue Moon”), plus new material recorded with Sholes. Elvis tackles covers of some of early rock and R&B’s biggest talents, Carl Perkins‘ “Blue Suede Shoes,” Little Richard‘s “Tutti Frutti,” Ray Charles‘ “I Got a Woman,” The Drifters‘ “Money Honey.” But he also ventured into the territory of Hollywood show tune balladry with Rodgers/Hart’s “Blue Moon.”

Although Elvis was a hot commodity and starting to receive more and more attention, he was still unproven and not yet a big star when he recorded Elvis Presley. As reviewer timregler writes, “so what we get is Elvis on his own terms . . . .” There is something still raw, uncertain and dangerous about this music. The Sun recordings feature Presley with mostly just an electric guitar and acoustic bass (plus drums on one track), while the RCA recordings add piano and drums for a fuller, more elaborate sound. The Sun tracks have the label’s characteristic reverb, leaving a faint feeling of spooky, otherworldly distance. That atmosphere is felt most strongly on “Blue Moon.” The punchy numbers “Blue Suede Shoes,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry (Over You)” and “One-Sided Love Affair” benefit from the drive they provide that frees Elvis’ vocal acrobatics to develop more nuance. If Presley’s earliest Sun recordings didn’t make explicitly clear the man’s range, it was undeniably apparent when the later RCA recordings sat next to them. The earliest attempts at pop balladry are here. Although in some respects this remained Elvis’ weakest skill at this moment in time, he demonstrates a lot of potential, if nothing else, in songs like “I’m Counting on You.” Elvis’ surprising growth as a singer, together with more elaborate production in the coming years, would improve his prospects. Yet the multifaceted approach of mixing up-tempo rockers with slow ballads would make this LP a defining statement and standard against which rock and roll albums (and pop music albums in general) would be judged for decades to come. The songs may not all be great, but there was practically no filler here. This was put together as a full album of material rather than a few preexisting singles cobbled together for re-release or a few singles padded with many inferior outtakes.

The vocabulary of this album is romance, tempered with some self-assured posturing. This made perfect sense in an era of claustrophobic conformity. It represented a more unbridled form of individual expression. But the predominant language of romance made it accessible yet also less directly objectionable than, say, the more intellectual jazz and beatnik music of counter-cultural circles. Elvis had stumbled through the unlocked back door of America’s entrenched cultural conservatism. And it seemed like everyone else followed — though picking up on one line of critique this use of romance may have contributed to the hypersexualization of women in coming decades. While certainly Elvis was not the only musical innovator of his day, the magnitude of his rather sudden and surprising fame made him an easy reference point as a kind of dividing line between different eras of popular culture.

Elvis became the fist popular music superstar of his kind in large part due to the timing of his arrival. In the 1950s, the United States was the biggest economic superpower in the world (parts of Europe still being in ruins). The combined legacies of the so-called Progressive and New Deal eras, together with the economic opportunities created by massive World War II industrialization, created a unique environment in which the powerful (willingly or unwillingly) gave working people the greatest share of wealth and power that they had ever experienced in the history of the nation. Those gains would be attacked relentlessly, and would begin to steeply erode in less than two decades, but they still presented themselves as new and seemingly permanent changes as Elvis came to the fore. This was the double whammy of Elvis’ stardom. He was the choice of both the young and of the working class. And he was their ally in the sense that he was a cultural commodity, an emblem of uncontrollable cool and swagger, the sorts of characteristics that entrenched interests can never convincingly deliver. But while cultural mavericks exist all the time, Elvis’ records sold millions of copies, proving not only in cultural terms but also in terms of cold hard dollars (the language of entrenched interests) that he had tapped into something that was tangible from any angle.

The Beach Boys, An Annotated Tour

RateYourMusic user nervenet‘s excellent Lou [Reed], in order list got me thinking of how I could put together a similar guided tour through a particular artist’s discography that avoids being either a ranked list or a chronological one. So here is my guide to navigating through The Beach Boys’ catalog, hitting the highs, the lows, and points in between.

	The Greatest Hits Vol.1: 20 Good Vibrations (1999) Well, if you live in the United States at least, The Beach Boys are so ubiquitous on the radio, on the TV, and everywhere, that you’ve probably heard most or all of these songs somewhere before. So that’s where we’ll begin this tour through The Beach Boys catalog. I don’t think this specific compilation makes a particularly representative overview of the group’s whole career, but it is just what it claims to be: a gathering of the group’s biggest hits. So I’ll assume you already know The Beach Boys as a vocal pop band, kind of focused on surf music and catchy fun-in-the-sun tunes. Well, that’s only the beginning…
	Pet Sounds (1966) The classic Pet Sounds is the place to start if you want to get to know The Beach Boys. It was then-bandleader Brian Wilson‘s coming of age epic. If you are at least in your mid-to-late teens or early twenties, then chances are you’ll connect with something on this album. It’s a lot more introverted that most of the band’s biggest hits (yeah, I know you know those already). But as we’ll see a little later on, introverted songwriting is a big part of what made Brian Wilson a pop music genius. A bonus with this album is that it features a guest, hired-gun lyricist (Tony Asher), who tremendously bolsters Brian’s sometimes undeveloped lyrical sense. However, if you think this is the best album The Beach Boys ever made, you need to read on, because we’ll get to that later…
	The Beach Boys Today! (1965) Okay, so we’ve touched on the vaunted Pet Sounds already, so it’s time to go back and pick up on a few earlier albums that led up to it. Frankly, The Beach Boys started out as a teen group and their early albums are very thin. Often pushed to release albums of mostly uninteresting filler, their earliest hits are best heard apart from the early albums (and you’ve heard the hits before!). The Beach Boys Today! is one of the best–probably THE best–of the pre-Pet Sounds albums. You can actually hear the group starting to hit their stride with the full-fledged orchestrated pop that made them great on songs like “Please Let Me Wonder” and “She Knows Me Too Well” that populate side two. But you also get a shot in the arm of fun pop songs on side one, like “Dance, Dance, Dance” and “Do You Wanna Dance.” But what you shouldn’t overlook is the original album-only version of “Help Me, Ronda” (it’s spelled differently than the more popular later version), which is perhaps the best version the group recorded. This album is helped tremendously by the fact that session musicians like Hal Blaine were being used on the records by this point, so that the boys could focus on the vocals.
	Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) (1965) Another nice little album that pre-dates Pet Sounds is this one. Although people criticize it for lacking any kind of cohesive vision, it does certainly have a lot of great songs: “California Girls,” the slightly Beatlesesque “Girl Don’t Tell Me,” the best-known version of “Help Me, Rhonda,” and “Let Him Run Wild.” While there are some throwaway tracks here–the bane of the earliest Beach Boys albums–lots of the “filler” is quite enjoyable, if straightforward, vocal pop.
	The SMiLE Sessions (2011) We’ve gotten through a few discs now. The truth is, though, you’re probably still listening to Pet Sounds. Actually, you should be, it’s just that good. Well, you’re probably also starting to wonder “How could they follow this up?” At the time, answering that question seemed to trouble Brian Wilson quite a bit too. The planned follow-up was SMiLE. The project, perhaps the most ambitous pop album ever attempted to date, never really came to fruition. Van Dyke Parks, a brilliant lyricists with surrealist tendencies, was brought in to pen the words for Brian Wilson’s music. With some great songs in hand, recording began. But, for whatever reasons (there were probably many), Brian Wilson broke down before the album could be completed and the project was shelved. Of course, one song–the most expensive to record in history–did emerge as a single: “Good Vibrations.” So this album remained a mystery. Instead, Brian retreated to his house. He built an indoor sandbox in his living room. He drained his swimming pool and set up recording equipment in it. From the safety of his own home, and with a few (very few) snippets and songs from the SMiLE sessions, Brian Wilson had The Beach Boys record their next album to actually see release. Smiley Smile. Fast forward a few decades, well, almost four decades actually. Brian is back, and he has released a newly-recorded solo album called Presents SMiLE, after revisiting fragments of the original recordings. He even tours to support that effort. But then, another seven years later, comes the surprise of The SMiLE Sessions. It’s not new recordings of the old songs. These are the old recordings stitched together. At last! Hallelujah! The holy grail of 60s pop! Well, er, almost. No doubt, this is a classic, even decades late. The orchestration soars, the tunes, magnificent. Yet there’s also something not quite right in some of the digital manipulations used to pull together the unfinished recordings for the original album. It’s minor quibble altogether, but it’s one reason not to start your Beach Boys journey here. You’re gonna have to make this a stop on it though. The sunshine daydreaming, the childish mythology, the druggy schizophrenia, the historical compendium-building, the christian moralizing, the hopeful irreverence–The SMiLE Sessions are all that and more. This must be called something other than simply SMiLE, but a newcomer is probably best served sticking to the presentation of the “original” album and skip the bonus tracks (for now), so as to bask in the wonderful vision and not turn it into something tedious.
	Smiley Smile (1967) Smiley Smile. To some it is an unmitigated disaster. But it’s my favorite Beach Boys album. If you hate this album, you are probably going to have a pretty different opinion about most of the rest of the catalog (although there might be a few places we agree a little at least). But anyway, this is about as “out there” an album as The Beach Boys ever made. It’s dark at times, full of surreal imagery, and creative as hell. The recordings are a little coarse at times (remember the recording equipment in the swimming pool?). Still, “Wonderful” anticipates Sonic Youth‘s “Little Trouble Girl” by almost three decades. Good luck finding any cut-up mix of eclectic sounds like “She’s Going Bald” anywhere from the same time period, or anything as good from any later period. And “Little Pad” is a perfect statement of the kind of romanticized, dreamy songwriting that from here on out will separate the Brian Wilson fans from all the others. We also have the poppy “Vegetables”, the peppy “Gettin’ Hungry”, and one of the very best ballads the group ever recorded in “With Me Tonight”. And you know, “Whistle In” has the kind of stream-of-consciousness diary-like quality that wouldn’t surface anywhere significant until Mark E. Smith and The Fall resurrected it almost two decades later. But I digress. Needless to say, I for one find the most wildly innovative ideas in the whole Beach Boys catalog on this album. If you want refinement, you’re better off looking elsewhere (like the Kenny G discography). But like I said, this one remains my favorite for its dense, inscrutable charms.
	Wild Honey (1967) So this, the follow-up to Smiley Smile, was probably another surprise for those trying to anticipate what The Beach Boys would do next. Wild Honey was the most stripped down, rocking album the group had made yet. The driving title track would become a concert favorite in the coming years (particularly with Blondie Chaplin to play it, but more on him later). This album brought The Beach Boys back into critical regard somewhat, and it inspired a lot of other artists to adopt a more stipped-down recording style too. But really it’s quite simply one of the nicest, most enjoyable and listenable Beach Boys albums around. No, there are no hits you’ll ever hear on the radio (even Smiley Smile ended up including “Good Vibrations”). But the mellow, soulful sound here is just real nice. Later, under Brain’s brother Carl Wilson’s direction, the band would return to a more soul-influenced sound, but the results then would never come close to the heights of Wild Honey.
	Friends (1968) Okay, having some familiarity with the hits behind us, the praised Pet Sounds and some very good earlier albums, as well as the travails of SMiLE and its progeny also behind us, it’s finally time to get to probably the best Beach Boys album. Virtually unknown outside of the realm of Beach Boys fandom these days, Friends is the group doing everything at their peak capacity. The songwriting is phenominal. Songs written with Van Dyke Parks for the SMiLE sessions are still showing up here in force. Dennis Wilson even contributes his songwriting for the first time. And if Pet Sounds is a coming-of-age album, this is the one about fully arriving at adulthood. While I’ve driven home the great songwriting already, the songwriting here is really only part of the story. Brian Wilson produced all the Beach Boys material during this era. His talents in producing recorded music were the best this side of Sly Stone. Brian could absolutely perfectly balance instrumentation, timbres, rhythm…heck…EVERYTHING that goes into a recording, that it just astounds me every time I hear this album. But you don’t have to really get into all that to enjoy this album. This is just one of the best pop albums I can think of. It has zero hits you’ll ever hear on the radio (yet again). But I do think part of why people ignore this album is also due the fact that it’s one that largely revolves around reaching adulthood, and let’s face it, that never really happens for a lot of people, or at least they are done listening to pop music by the time it does happen. In that sense, I can understand how some won’t relate. So this one slipped through the cracks. But as Bob Dylan supposedly once said at a Beach Boys concert, “You know they’re fucking good, man.” True.
	Sunflower (1970) A good effort for the 1970s Beach Boys. This album has held up better than most from the era. But clearly, they had lost a step by this point (don’t believe the fan hype surrounding this one). The best tracks are the ones with the most input from Brian, like “This Whole World.” You can feel the schmaltz creeping in here though.
	Surf’s Up (1971) Here’s an album on which I disagree with a lot of Beach Boys aficionados. I think this is a pretty marginal album. Of course, it does have some essential tracks, namely the closers “‘Til I Die” and “Surf’s Up.” I guess for that reason it can’t be missed. Really, the title track here is one of the very best Beach Boys cuts from any era. But the other stuff, like “Long Promised Road” and “Feel Flows,” are really only mediocre. Plus, we have the return of worthless filler like “Disney Girls (1957)” and “Student Demonstration Time.” Well, all things considered this still beats a lot of other albums…
	Surfin’ Safari (1962) Time to come back to reality. Here’s the first ever Beach Boys album. It’s an almost totally forgettable assemblage of filler, with the title track and their breakout single “Surfin'” thrown in. I put this here on the list so that we remember to appreciate how good things were in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s.
	Surfer Girl (1963) This is a huge step up from the group’s debut album. We’ve got more hits here. “In My Room”, “Surfer Girl” and “Little Deuce Coupe” were big advances in songwriting. But still a lot of filler.
	Shut Down Volume 2 (1964) This mysteriously titled album (there is no “Vol. 1”) makes a few more advances in songwriting with “Don’t Worry Baby” and “The Warmth of the Sun”, and includes the popular “Fun, Fun, Fun.” I think it’s at least as good as Surfer Girl. But still too much throwaway filler! In fact, much of this is far worse than just throwaway filler. “Denny’s Drums” is rightly the butt of many Beach Boys jokes, and “‘Cassius’ Love vs. ‘Sonny’ Wilson” is just as bad.
	20/20 (1969) Okay, back to some stronger material. Well, 20/20 isn’t really a cohesive album-length statement like most of the mid-to-later 1960s albums, but it has more good songs than most of the early albums. With the nostalgic fun times hit “Do It Again,” the unique rocker “Bluebirds Over the Mountain,” the Brian Wilson sleeper “Time to Get Alone,” the song supposedly originally written by Charles Manson and the Manson Family “Never Learn Not to Love,” and some more SMiLE leftovers in “Cabinessence” and “Our Prayer,” this one is all over the map. But even so, and even if this release was kind of an attempt to clear the vaults, there are still a lot of good songs present here. You need to hear this at some point.
	The Beach Boys in Concert (1973) I like to think of this as one of the hidden gems in the Beach Boys catalog. Coming as a live album in the early-to-mid 1970s, it doesn’t look promising on paper. Brian had stopped touring with the band long ago, and he really wasn’t doing much at all, if anything, with band at this point. And Mike Love was long an advocate of milking the summer fun hits that were easy to perform live (he got his way soon enough). But here, we actually get a lot of great, more complex songs. Even the rambling “Heroes and Villains” from Smiley Smile appears. And a few of the versions of songs from the early 1970s studio albums (“Marcella”, “Leaving This Town”) sound better live than on the studio originals. The value of newish members Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar is clear. Their contributions, though their songwriting is maligned by some, are far superior to wholesale crap like “The Nearest Faraway Place” offered on 20/20 by departed member Bruce Johnston (good riddance! But he would return). I guess you have to like The Beach Boys by this point, and need to have heard some of their poorer albums, to really appreciate this album. It may not be great, and I wouldn’t quite call it essential–it comes close though. But if you have made it this far and are still intrigued, you’ll really enjoy this one. It’s a nice little reminder of why Bob Dylan made his “famous” comment that I mentioned above.
	Beach Boys Concert (1964) Okay, this has a wide reputation as being a pretty bad live album. It’s not wholly terrible, but it’s not good either. It has serviceable versions of a few of their early hits, some generally poor covers, and an unfortunate amount of instrumentals–never one of the group’s strengths. You probably don’t even need to listen to this. But by way of contrast, it does show how welcome The Beach Boys In Concert was as a live entry in the catalog.
	Carl and the Passions – “So Tough” (1972) When Brian went pretty much into full retirement, his brother Carl Wilson took over the duties of producing the records. He’s in charge here, as the title suggests. Also, with this album, we first hear the new South African members Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar. This is a pretty disappointing record. It has a few decent cuts, without having anything particularly memorable. The soulful blues rock of “Here She Comes,” written and sung entirely by Chaplin and Fataar, is something totally new for a Beach Boys record. It’s a good cut to fool someone with in a blindfold test. Brian’s “You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone” may be the best here. But “Cuddle Up,” with string arrangements from Daryl Dragon of Captain and Tennille “fame” is just awful. I don’t want to hear any of this “but it’s a touching performance by Dennis” crap. That shit blows and y’all should know better.
	Holland (1973) The Beach Boys were clearly in trouble by this point. They really weren’t very popular anymore, and their last few albums had been decreasing in quality. Some see Holland, which was recorded in the Netherlands, as a comeback album. I’m not one of those people. It’s okay. I think it’s a little better than Carl and The Passions, but not by much at all. Of course, what we have for the album opener is really the last of the leftovers from Brian‘s collaboration with Van Dyke Parks in “Sail On, Sailor.” It’s one of the few really great songs The Beach Boys recorded in the 1970s. The “California Saga” medley starts out fine with the “Big Sur” segment, but it has some dismal lows by the time it wraps with Al Jardine‘s “California” segment. There are some interesting moments elsewhere, but this really is a disappointing album.
	Mount Vernon and Fairway (A Fairy Tale) (1973) A free bonus EP included with Holland. It’s an unusual child-like spoken word piece set to music. You guessed right if you think this one is all Brian. Actually it’s a fascinating concept, and the background music is quite good at times. But the band manager Jack Rieley does the narration without any spirit, and Brian’s words are clumsy at times. Conceptually, this is way more interesting than Holland itself. It comes across as a little half-assed. I still like it.
	Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys (1993) Okay, it took us a while, but we have pretty much made it through the release of most of the leftover songs from SMiLE on later recordings. Now, at first glance this box set might seem totally unnecessary, as we have already made it through a slew of Beach Boys albums as part of this list, not to mention all the hits you know from the radio. But this isn’t what I would call a conventional box set. Yeah, it’s got most or all of the big hits here, but the reason huge fans will need to look into it at this point is the fact that it contains most of the previously unreleased outtakes from the SMiLE recording sessions in piecemeal form. That includes a great solo rendition of “Surf’s Up” by Brian at his piano, and all the bits of songs that had been eventually renamed and recycled through the early 1970s. You could, if so inclined, even make your very own SMiLE bootleg! It’s a hobby that has maybe lost some luster after not one but many incarnations of the album have been officially released, but no serious fan is going to take releases from forty years later at face value; those brave few are going to fix something, even if they have to break it first.
	Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (2004) If you enjoyed The SMiLE Sessions, it may be worth finding the Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE solo version too. Now, some of you will complain that Brian’s new backing band The Wondermints are nothing compared the original Beach Boys. And some of you will say that these songs, and the album as a whole, seem a bit more concise and streamlined than what had been reported about the aborted original album suggested. And a lot of you will probably find this rendered completely superfluous by The SMiLE Sessions. Well, feel free to complain. If you’ve made it this far down the list, you’ve earned the right to bitch and moan a little. But apart from what this album could have been or whatever, this is still some great music. It is a little out of place 40 years after it was written, but that shouldn’t matter. I was lucky enough to go to the first ever live performance of the album in the United States (me and a slew of middle-aged men wearing tacky Hawaiian shirts). This recording didn’t entirely live up to the live performance for me, but I still like it.
	15 Big Ones (1976) This was billed as a great “comeback” for the band. I find it to be a practically unlistenable piece of garbage, with the exception of “Had to Phone Ya.” This was an unmistakable sign that the band’s best times were over. The title refers to 15 big turds, er, crummy tracks.
	Love You (1977) Originally a Brain Wilson solo effort converted into a Beach Boys record. Fans like this one for its weirdness and the fact that Brian was back in form, musically. Still, Brian was working without the aid of a lyricist, and so we get a lot of garbage in that department, like a song about Johnny Carson with the line “when guests are boring he fills up the slack.” In spite of the weak lyrics, the goofiness of this is charming, and fun. Chronologically, this is probably the last Beach Boys album worth bothering with.
	M.I.U. Album (1978) After Love You, this one was a disappointment. The group isn’t trying very hard, and seems to be just going through the motions listlessly. They hit some pretty low points toward the end of the album (“Match Point of Our Love,” which actually sounds worse than its title!). Still, there are a few halfway decent songs here and most of the album is serviceable, if fairly nondescript and bland. Highly committed fans might get something small from this album, but it is not of general interest.
	L.A. (Light Album) (1979) An album emblematic of The Beach Boys’ descent into soft rock purgatory. Most of this is so bland it drifts by without notice, with the better tracks (“Good Timin’,” “Angel Come Home,” “Baby Blue”) not really good enough compared to their best material to cause that much of a stir and the bad tracks (“Here Comes the Night,” “Shortenin’ Bread”) so forced it’s embarrassing. At this point it became clear that no matter how hard the group might try, they simply weren’t going to be able to be truly relevant anymore. Still, the album is listenable for the most part, and fans of the slower material on the group’s various other 1970s albums might like it.
	Keepin’ the Summer Alive (1980) By the 1980s, The Beach Boys hardly seemed relevant anymore. Yet Keepin’ the Summer Alive has a few good tunes, including the title track. This is better than the last couple albums, and better than anything that came later. But it also casts the Boys as grumpy old timers desperately trying to summon up the past rather than looking toward the future.
	Stack-o-Tracks (1968) This is an album full of instrumental versions of the band’s hits. So it’s billed as basically a karaoke album. A novelty item.
	Little Deuce Coupe (1963) Another novelty. This album features almost entirely songs about cars. The best songs had previously been released on other albums. Not much of interest new here. A by-product of the ridiculous rush to put out “new” albums at too quick a pace.
	The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album (1964) Wrapping up the novelty entries in the catalog (pun intended), we have the christmas album. It is short, at less than thirty minutes, but has the classic “Little Saint Nick” and some other good songs (“Merry Christmas, Baby,” “We Three Kings of Orient Are”). It is a novelty though, and nothing essential. Yet the boilerplate, Sinatra-esque orchestral backing utilized at times here may have pointed the way to more satisfying efforts that expanded on those kinds of ideas like The Beach Boys Today!, Pet Sounds, etc. The Beach Boys came back to christmas music in the 1970s with a single “Child of Winter” and then another whole album that was rejected by their label and not originally released–at least some of that material was later released on Ultimate Christmas.
	All Summer Long (1964) I needed to hold something back on the list so that the tail end doesn’t seem like just a bunch of marginal later efforts and oddities. This one is another step up from Surfer Girl and Shut Down, Vol. 2, and was their best album up through that point. But it is still a distinct step down from the very best albums in their catalog with the ever present bother of filler from which the early albums never escape. But this one is pleasant, and can be handled all the way through. It’s appropriately titled.
	Surfin’ USA (1963) Their second album has the horrid ripoff of Chuck Berry‘s “Sweet Little Sixteen” in “Surfin’ USA.” Nothing too exciting here.
	The Beach Boys (1985) This was something of a reunion album after the death of Dennis Wilson. Unfortunately, the album spawned a hit song, which probably encouraged the group to keep going well beyond their prime. Anyway, this one makes extremely overt attempts to sound current, complete with lots of mid-1980s synths and drum machines. Apart from the two mediocre songs that open the album, this could be classified by the UN as cruel and inhumane treatment of its listeners. This is one of those albums that plays in the waiting room to hell–as the universe sadistically waits for you to realize that you are already there.
	Still Cruisin’ (1989) This one has that song “Kokomo,” which I HATE. And die hard fans insist that it is the best song on this album (I haven’t heard it fortunately). Mike Love was fully in control of the band by this point. Clearly, he had successfully killed the dream. Surely, the band could sink no lower….
	Summer in Paradise (1992) I think everyone with functioning ears would have been happy if The Beach Boys just hung it up after Love You or even L.A. (Light Album). But instead, we have a parade of worthless junk tarnishing the catalog from the 1980s onward. An album like this with John motherfuckin’ Stamos singing Dennis Wilson‘s “Forever” is perhaps the lowest of the low for the band (though, admittedly, it’s not that bad, and even better than some of the stuff the band proper was up to at this point). Although, with some of the original members still alive (Mike Love, Al Jardine…looking in your direction) I won’t hold my breath on that.
	Dennis Wilson Pacific Ocean Blue (1977) The one solo album Dennis Wilson completed before his drowning death. This makes the list to redeem that John Stamos track from Summer in Paradise, because it’s a fine album that is as good or better than anything The Beach Boys did from the 1970s forward. Also be sure to check out Dennis in the great cult film Two-Lane Blacktop (1971).
	Beach Boys’ Party! (1965) A quickly tossed off album that few seem to like. It’s actually much better than it seems. Despite a lack of Brian Wilson originals, covers of the likes of The Beatles are choice. There is a lot of energy here, and it’s a fun listen from beginning to end. The vocals and instrumentals aren’t polished, but that’s part of what makes this feel as lively as it does. Beach Boys’ Party! is worth giving a chance for anyone with an interest in the band’s pre-Pet Sounds period.
	That’s Why God Made the Radio (2012) A really late career comeback album that’s a roll-back to the group’s Pet Sounds-era music in many ways. The lyrics are corny and there is definitely something artificial in the mix, particularly a feeling that the vocals are electronically processed, but this has touches of what made the group so great in their prime (ahem, Brian). If you’ve exhausted everything else in that vein from the early years and still want more this is a better place to look than other post-1980 releases.
	Live in London (1970) Some claim this live album is the group’s best. I haven’t heard it to judge for sure.
	Endless Summer (1974) In the midst of Brian Wilson‘s retirement from the band, and capping a commercial dry spell, Mike Love helped put together this collection of almost entirely pre-Pet Sounds hits. The album, along with a follow-up named Spirit of America, was successful in terms of selling lots of copies. In a way, Endless Summer helped define The Beach Boys’ presence on oldies radio. This is the fun-in-the-sun side of the band that can indeed be a lot of fun, but I feel like it’s a little narrow in its scope and range. That’s exactly why oldies radio gravitates to these hits (when’s the last time you heard a sad song on an oldies station?). But these kinds of songs aren’t what bring me back to Beach Boys recordings often.
	Classics: Selected by Brian Wilson (2002) This is the most interesting Beach Boys compilation that I’ve seen. The tracks were selected by Brian Wilson, and he focuses on a lot of his own best songs. For me at least, it’s those songs that I find myself wanting to listen to again and again. There are a select few of the summertime hits here, but mostly this focuses on the songs you’ll never (or rarely) hear on the radio. By this point in our tour, you’ve really heard everything The Beach Boys have to offer. This disc, or a digital playlist resembling it, is probably what you’re looking to listen to on a regular basis to get a nice cross-section of the entire Beach Boys universe–if your tastes are anything like mine. I’m going to end the list here. The other stragglers in the catalog just aren’t worth mentioning. Those are for the obsessively completist collectors only, and I’m not one of those (or am I?).