Pet Sounds - classic or dud

A lot of overrated albums are still classic. But this one is not even overrated.

Except for Sloop John B, which gets a pass because of an injoke with my cousin involving hoisting my, erm, rather large grandmother's underwear in the air on laundry day and running around screaming "Hoist up the john b sails!" over and over. So, yeah. Anyhow.

― Ally, Wednesday, May 2, 2001 8:00 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark

Figured this for an lj post.

TWO instrumentals? This album did not need two instrumentals.

i love the beach boys. i don't really have anything else to add. sorry

― gareth

^^^^this

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" came on oldies station today and I just imagined being in the room they recorded it and tried to picture all these people playing multiple pianos and jingle bells and tympanist and vibraphones and etc etc. Was it recorded live? Wow what an amazing sound Brian got!

I've been listening to it on repeat for the last few days and one thing that's struck me is that 'I'm Waiting For The Day' is the album's unheralded masterpiece. Does anyone else agree?

― Alba (Alba), Friday, July 8, 2005 11:46 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark

Yes

If it had some ripping frazzled psyche guitar solos, it'd be a much better album.

Certainly worked for the Zombies.

i pulled this thread up cuz i'm spending tonight in self loathing mode and listening t oPet Sounds and Smiley Smile era Beach Boys (just saw Mike Love and the band he calls the Beach Boys live a few weeks ago and they were pretty awesome)....

and this thread is clearly the biggest challopser I've ever read. Pet Sounds might be 'overrated' to some degree but there's little doubt in my mind that it's filled with fantastic songs. Hell, the first four tracks are pretty much flawless!

basically old-ILM was just a bunch of trolls who hated to get trolled and eventually got older, fatter, grayer in their safe haven corner of the blogosphere.

so presumably there's a thread from 2003 proclaiming Coda to be Led Zeppelin's best album.....

hmm when did Lord Soto Challops show up on ILM?

We're not as intent on fighting the Heartbreak of Rockism as we once were. I never gave a fuck about rockism, or popism, or Geirism, or whatever. I just liked what I liked, including Pet Sounds.

Kind of a dud, for me, to be honest. http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/the-beach-boys-–-pet-sounds-–-round-14-–-nick’s-selection/

So while I find the rollicking drums of I’m Waiting For The Day exciting and pleasurable, I find Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) and You Still Believe In Me to be just a little… dull.

Aww really? I think 'You Still Believe In Me' is incredibly beautiful, the bit at the end (from 'I wanna cry' echoing the intro melody, before it dies down and builds up into those harmonies) is incredible.

"Pet Sounds" is a classic for me, but on a personal level I get the most enjoyment from "Sunflower" of all the Beach Boys albums.

Someone in my neighborhood is jamming this pretty loud for 11:30pm on a Monday night.

"I'm Waiting For The Day" at the moment.

your neighbours OTM

Just got the Pet Sounds Sessions box in the mail and I skipped straight ahead to the a capella version of the album at the start of disc three. Boy, what a revelation. I mean, it's obviously their thing to do those gorgeous perfect harmonies, but to hear them isolated like that just brings out something so pure in it. Really hypnotizing and wonderful. I don't know why I waited so long to get the box.

Thanks to a Rick Astley-related link, just learned that this is currently #26 on the British album charts.

The sessions box is wonderful. Night and day between this and the Beatles anthologies !

WANT.
i love this album so so much.

listening to the instrumental tracks and you can sort of see why mike love was freaked out. otherworldly chord changes.

This is like a master class in pop. Anyone who wants to make songs should listen to this box !

BBC Classic Albums show tomorrow night on bbc 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07ljcxf

Did anyone happen to catch this? And how was it? Should I try to watch it somehow from across the pond? Does David Fricke show up intermittently to tell me why Pet Sounds is so good?

TWO instrumentals? This album did not need two instrumentals.

― Mr. Snrub, Sunday, October 25, 2009 3:49 PM (6 years ago)

it totally did btw, the instrumentals on this album are both wonderful

Yup. And as I mentioned previously, listening to the instrumentals of the other songs is a trip.

At least for me, it really brought out the "strangeness" and "complexity" of the chord changes and stuff.

Does David Fricke show up intermittently to tell me why Pet Sounds is so good?

Same question

No, he doesn't. This wasn't long or in depth enough, they didn't talk about every track for a start. They interviewed all the right people though: all the remaining Beach Boys, Tony Asher, Hal Blaine, Don Randi. Don't know why Helen Shapiro was on it though and why she was given as much screen time as Mike Love or Al Jardine. Brian started off very lucid but seemed to be losing it a bit by the end.

yeah, the moments with Brian and Mark Linett in the studio, vaguely listening to some isolated tracks, are awkward (and quite useless).
the documentary was ok but I guess not for big fans who already know a lot about all these stories and recordings.
I don't think I have learned or heard anything new but it's always nice to go back to this fantastic album.
a funny moment was when Jardine was seating in front of a piano for the interview. then next comment he's still seating there but with a guitar. I was wondering where they would stop and if he would have an extra instrument each time !

Pet Sounds good because the lyrics were largely written by Laura LaPlante's son. And that's fun.

The day Brian Wilson and Tony Asher met at Western Studios, Tony introduced Brian to "Stella By Starlight", perhaps during Asher's Bill Evans phase.

Of course, Brian's obsession with Dick Reynolds, the arranger for the Four Freshmen, culminated in the "Beach Boys" warbly bootleged version of the song (along with another standard performed just as warbly, "How Deep Is The Ocean"). Both are Brian, Reynolds, and Bones Howe in Studio A (where Spector recorded Ebb Tide a month earlier)

But I suspect all of these events happened on the same day, October 15, '65, just as Brian was recording this overlooked seed for Pet Sounds (generally misidentified as a Smile fragment)

https://youtu.be/iMDn-CQPyF8

How much Brian was dropping in on Gold Star during the fall of '65 just to hear other people's sessions remains debated, but some of those Spector proteges/throw-aways are fucking marvels -- so I can see where Brian felt a surge of ideas

https://youtu.be/28IkZ0okfcQ

And once the Beach Boys returned from Japan around Feb '66, Mike Love was greeted with Brian's solo Caroline No already in the can, and facing his role on "Let Go of Your Ego" being the first session.

https://youtu.be/X3f6ZKQ_ffo

I often speculate on the Sloop John B sessions, just before Mike Love got on that plane to Hawaii/Japan (wait; who's gettin' paid royalties on this traditional folk song, Brian?!)

this was lacking something. wished the had the in depth analysis of each track like they did with previous episodes of this

Still the best Brian interviews I've seen on it, and well combined with Wrecking Crew interciews:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0vAL8dHBxA

missed you bro

thank you. seriously :-)

“I can’t help how I act when you’re not here with me”

picked up the 4cd sessions this week, with acapella/miscellany/sax solo/dogs barking. "hey jack, is it possible we could bring a horse in here...?" "my horse would be so bitchin' in here!" no one will ever make a record as beautiful and pure as this. when traveling in california i saw brian & co play it from start to finish in san diego. i got told off for dancing.

oh, and my housemate made a very astute observation on a detail in 'don't talk. he remarked (while blind drunk i might add) how the kettle drum appearing around 2:07 is perhaps in anticipation of the following song, which of course has the big kettle drum intro.

for people who listen to records and who like the beach boys: i'm playing a non-fancy U.S. stereo reissue from 2016 put out by Capitol/UMe with the UPC code 6 02547 822289 1 and it is without a doubt the best version of this album that i've ever heard. and i've heard multiple versions from multiple years and yes i have heard the mono version that people love that comes with So Tough and this is really the one. Big, Bright, Tons of Detail. its a jaw-dropper.

played on a Music Hall Ikura table with a gold Viburg weight and resting on an Auralex Acoustics isolation platform and run through a Marantz 2230 into vintage Klipsch Heresy II speakers. just in case Steve Hoffman is reading this.

i know i know what about mono but whatever. and i know i know what about the 50th anniversary 200 gram analogue productions pressing from 2016??? well, that one is probably better? i've never heard it! what i have heard? TONS of crappy pressings of this record. and this is just such a treat to actually hear one that opens up and blooms like a rose instead of lying there in the mud with those goats at the pet sounds goat farm. no offense to the goats.

anyway, kudos to Mark Linett. it gives me hope for mixing old stuff in the 21st century.

Some of the worst posts I've ever seen on the internet to start this thread. Truly gag-worthy takes.

Your set up sounds like a dream Scott, happy listening to you!

xp is there something about the Carl and the Passions version that sets it apart?

the tapes they used were supposed to be top notch/early master/etc. can't remember the details. i'm sure there is a very long internet story about it. i'm sure there are people here who can tell you more! some people swear by it as the go-to mono pressing. it sounds good from what i remember. i've sold a bunch of them.

yeah, that's the one i have - i just remember buying that double-lp set and being pretty sure the shop had no clue it was included. just looked up the discogs prices and was shocked how much mid quality even goes for.

i've had pristine early pressings that look unplayed and i think they are going to blow me away and they sound like mud. it happens. Capitol vinyl can be like that. which is why people prefer certain pressing plants from that era. and which is why it was so nice to hear this copy i was playing from 2016. they did a heck of a job with it. but it also doesn't sound...you know, digital. like a CD. too clean. too overdone as far as a new mix goes. people can go overboard with new tech to change the inherent qualities of a record. make it sound like what they THINK it should sound like. this just really sounds like what i imagine an actual reel-to-reel of the album sounded like in 1966. only louder probably.

I truly wanted to love this album, but I just can't.

its a weird one.

in 2019 i got to listen to this album while riding the Pacific Surfliner and walking around the San Diego Zoo (the site of the cover shoot). Balboa park instantly struck me as the visual universe of Pet Sounds, also this music loves giraffes. It was 70F and sunny, and there are so many plants i've never seen anywhere else in the zoo.

I don't think Pet Sounds is overrated by the dad rags, if anything it was underrated by the wider public for so long. i'm sure it's pretty hard to have an original thought about Pet Sounds but one dimension the title takes on for me- it's an album about the vulnerable, dependent kind of love, like that of a pet for its owner.

the thing with the dad rag praise, calling Pet Sounds the best album ever made implies a lot of things that i've grown uneasy with, like that art should never be limited by practical constraints...

i'm happy with my cd versions (1990 mono with trombone dixie etc, 97 box set)

I don't think Pet Sounds is overrated by the dad rags, if anything it was underrated by the wider public for so long.

I think so too. And also Rolling Stone (especially editor Dave Marsh) were actually pretty hard on it whenever I came across any mention of it published in the '70s or anything Marsh wrote in the '80s and '90s. They didn't hate it, but they constantly argued it was pretentious and beneath their earlier hits. Even Robert Christgau and I believe Greil Marcus maintain that argument.

They're older now, but the first newspaper critics I remember reading in the '90s were part of a later generation and really championed it. Everyone I knew back home who adored it was high school or college age at the turn of the millennium - Wilson's big revival (which began with that first Pet Sounds tour) probably fed off that and vice versa. I haven't heard as much about it now, but I think that's more reflective of changes in pop with the music most consciously influenced by Wilson having less of a mainstream presence now. I personally don't care - I never bought into the idea that musical trends defined "greatness" to the extent that a work is taken down a notch simply because other things have become trendy. Pet Sounds hasn't lost anything for me, it's still brilliant and beautiful for so many reasons - absolutely one of the great landmarks in rock history.