STACK NZ Jun #74

MUSIC FEATURE

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Its purity of emotion, gorgeous vocal effects and symphonic qualities remain timeless, as do the sentiments of maturing love on That's Not Me , the warmth of companionship on Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) , and how love can wither as people grow apart on Caroline No : “Where did your long hair go, where is the girl I used to know, where it that happy glow... who took that look away...?” Instrumental pieces like the subtle Let's Go Away For a While and the surfer-dream title track – courageous inclusions from a band whose vocal harmonies were their signature – stand as the equal of songs like I Know There's an Answer , which sounds like Wilson's transition from pop writer to masterful creator. Wilson didn't leave the slightly sickly pop sentiments of love songs behind ( Here Today ) but he put them in a new context where the ideas were more thoughtful ( I Just Wasn't Made For These Times ) and elevated them.

Graham Reid goes on a marathon Pet Sounds bender, half a century after its release. tHE SOuND OF POP GENIUS

MUSIC

Only Knows is his favourite song and – after the step-change of Revolver which they were working on at the time – The Beatles responded with the even more elaborate Sgt. Pepper's.

T here are two reasons to be excited about the 50th anniversary box set of the Beach Boys' classic album Pet Sounds . The first is that it exists at all – a whopping 104 tracks across the five-CD version which includes mono and stereo mixes, instrumental backing tracks and live versions – and we can hear how Brian Wilson's mind worked in the studio. The second reason is there aren't a dozen versions of Sloop John B . These days Pet Sounds is considered one of the great albums of the rock era, but it had a ho-hum reception on release in May 1966. It just scraped into the US top 10 and was one of the few Beach Boys albums in America not to go gold on release (although it went to #2 in Britain). At the time, most rock writers (of whom there were very few) were indifferent about it. In fact, eight years after its release Stephen Davis writing in Rolling Stone went to great lengths to describe it as the first rock record to be a concept album (the vagaries of love and relationships was the theme, aside from Sloop John B) and hail it as soulful, lovely, and “by far the best album Brian has yet delivered." By that time Pet Sounds had been recognised as a glittering star in the musical cosmos, and the album which made The Beatles up their game. Paul McCartney has frequently said God

The reissues – various iterations from a single CD re-release, through vinyl to the massive box set – confirm Brian Wilson's genius, and also that of the Wrecking Crew musicians he used on these sessions which lasted four months. The big box is only for obsessives (count me in) because most people can live without a seven minute stop-start run-through of Wouldn't It Be Nice with Wilson interrupting until the musicians are on the money. But if you're curious about how genius works then Pet Sounds is the album which is worth pulling apart. And, as they say, God is in the details... After this Brian Wilson delivered the peerless Good Vibrations single then had his emotional meltdown, and his next project SMiLE – which he described as “a teenage symphony to God” – never happened in the way he envisioned. But for Pet Sounds his vision was intact. Terrible album cover though.

But where Sgt. Pepper's remains embalmed in the era of hippie psychedelia, Pet Sounds – by being more poppy, soulful and heartfelt – is still fresh today, and its innovations (layering of vocals, orchestration, sonic effects from theremin, bicycle bells and so on) opened the door on how to create pop in the studio. Its gorgeous vocal effects and symphonic qualities remain timeless These days Pet Sounds frequently tops Best Albums Ever lists – as it did in this year's 200 Greatest Albums of All Time in Uncut – or at worst is in the top five (although perversely, in the post-grunge/post-Britpop era, Q magazine in 2003 had it at a lowly 99 out of their top 100).

For more interviews, overviews and reviews by Graham Reid see: www.elsewhere.co.nz

JUNE 2016

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