The Beach Boys post Smile

Just a reccommendation.

If you love The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations, look into The Beach Boys' 1970-1973 albums Sunflower, Surf's Up and Holland.

These are great follow-ups to the unfinished, until the early 2000's unreleased album Smile.

In 1967 after Brian Wilson had his nervous breakdown, the other Beach Boys helped him return to doing music with their help.  As they did, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine realized their own talents and blossomed into great songwriter-producers and Brian Wilson's star pupils.  They, especially Carl and Dennis, began producing genius works influenced by Brian's best work, especially Smile, and with their help Brian was once again able to produce genius.

Together they found a new magic, and worked up to a true follow-up to Pet Sounds and, especially in spirit, Smile.

That was Sunflower.

And Surf's Up, an ironic title for a very sophistocated album that is the title of a brilliant Smile number, one of the keystones of Smile, which was completed for this album.

And their final masterpiece, Holland.

And the final masterpieces from any Beach Boy, Dennis Wilson's solo album Pacific Ocean Blue and what he completed of its follow-up Bambu.

And if you love these and want more, look into every Beach Boys album from 1967's Wild Honey through 1973's Holland and 1973's Beach boys In Concert.  Including both live albums from this era.  Wild Honey and Friends in particular are great if you love indie lofi (and are themselves legendary in my book), and 20/20 and 'Carl and the Passions 'So Tough'' both have some masterpieces in them.  Two of the tracks on Carl and the Passions, He Come Down and All This is That, are easily among the greatest tracks that even The Beach Boys ever produced.  But the ones I've mentioned above are especially the best of the era, especially if you love ambitious works.

Sunflower, Surf's Up, Holland and Pacific Ocean Blue are all each perhaps just as great even as Pet Sounds.  And each one unique, each one its own world musically, just as Pet Sounds is.  And all four master Brian's innovations from Smile. (to my untrained ears, anyway, the ears of a storyteller, not of a musician.  They all tell stories much like Smile does.  Which is to take all the sophistocated things that in Pet Sounds are introspective and turn it all around to become open and outward-looking.)

Just a reccommendation, for anyone who loves the Beach Boys.

All follow-ups to Brian's innovations on Smile.

All follow-ups to all the sophistocation and brilliance of Pet Sounds, and all realizations (to me, anyway) of the potential of Smile.

Two more things: For any fan of Pet Sounds, 1965's Beach Boys Today deserves to be legendary in its own right, especially (but not only) the wonderful brilliant side 2.  And on side 1, which is itself great, the second and third tracks, Good to my Baby and Don't Hurt my Little Sister, may be filler musically, but as storytelling they are the most substantial things on side 1 save only for side 1's masterpiece, When I Grow Up to Be a Man, and are among the great songs of the era from them where storytelling is concerned.  And if you are a fan of New Wave or synth-pop, new wave fans who are aware of it must absolutely worship 1977's The Beach Boys Love You!  It has a quite different sensibility from anything from them before it; whether you love it will probably depend more on what you think of New Wave and synth-pop (and power pop) than what you think of Pet Sounds or Holland!

Enjoy!

    Sincerely,

                David S. Annderson