Pet Sounds - classic or dud

“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.