An Aspiring Nerd's Guide to the Beach Boys
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While the out-of-touch once dismissed the Beach Boys as ’60s sappers for beach bums, the band’s influence has only grown amongst auteurs, taking a new life in everything from punk rock to the worship of contemporary indie. A more nuanced exploration of mastermind Brian Wilson’s work reveals a catalog every bit as varied and forward thinking as any band of the era. And that includes Brian’s number one rival, the Beatles. Paul McCartney once called Wilson a “modern day Stravinsky.” Let’s listen to four of his albums and see if we agree…
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Beach Boys – Endless Summer
While Brian Wilson would go on to press the mainstream to the edges of the avant garde (creating some of the most innovative songs of our age), he was equally adept at simple pop structure. Collecting the group’s initial run of mind-blowing show stoppers, Endless Summer is by far the best introduction to the group’s whimsical, beach-obsessed beginnings.
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Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Considered a work of staggering genius matched only by the Beatles, Pet Sounds inhabits the perfect space between what ’60s pop was, and what it had begun to be. Soaring laments like “I just wasn’t Made for These Times” are matched by iconic love ballads like “God Only Knows”, wooing with an irresistibly relatable range of ideas and emotions.
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Beach Boys – Smile
While the original Smile remains a record that never was (the band abandoned it in 1968), Brian Wilson’s modern revamp is a more than adequate reminder that, at their height, the Beach Boys were capable of orchestration every bit as inventive as Sgt Pepper’s and every bit as revelatory as Revolver.
Beach Boys – Surf’s Up
The work of a shattered genius, Surfs Up may be a scattered, unassuming album, even the mad science of a tortured soul. Yet, even in the throes of actual clinic insanity, Wilson’s output was marked with a peculiar brilliance. Equally sweet and strange, it might be last gasp of the maestro’s greatest age, but what a gasp it was.
