Best Beach Boys studio album?

I mean, I can totally sympathize w/ u if u love Kokomo unironically, but to rate that album as their career high is just ludicrous.

yes

xps

imho the first half of Summer Days and Summer Nights is pretty weak. I have no use for the Girl From New York City, Amusement Parks USA, or Salt Lake City, really. It's weird that they loaded the first side with covers and put the real genius tracks on side 2. The peaks of the album are REALLY high though - Let Him Run Wild! omg that song.

as far as filler goes, I'm Bugged at My Old Man is probably my favorite filler track of theirs hands-down.

LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!

You have to hand it to Salt Lake City just for its lunatic novelty value.
it is so fucking dumb that it transcends dumbness. i imagine that if they'd let him, mike love would have written 40 "city" songs, just so that they'd get regional airplay. i'm sure they still jam "salt lake city" in SLC regularly. and everytime they do, mike love kills a puppy.

imho the first half of Summer Days and Summer Nights is pretty weak. I have no use for the Girl From New York City, Amusement Parks USA, or Salt Lake City, really. It's weird that they loaded the first side with covers and put the real genius tracks on side 2. The peaks of the album are REALLY high though - Let Him Run Wild! omg that song.

Agreed that the first half isn't as good, but Salt Lake City has an amazing Steve Douglas sax break. And for some reason, I used to fantasize about recording Girl From New York City in a Cupid & Psyche-era Scritti Politti style.

Remember when you spilled coke all over your blouse?

ugh stop it

All Summer Long (the album, not the song) is one of my least favourite Boys albums. I don't know why - it has some great singles, and a couple of nice ballads, but it doesn't hang together as a record for some reason. Am I being unfair?

Summer Days is so, so good though. Absolutely adore it, even the stupid songs.

Maybe my perception of these two albums is affected by how they're backed as CD two-fers though. All Summer Long has a lot of great songs so I don't understand why I'm harsh on it. Then I realised it's b/w the rather hotchpotch Little Deuce Coupe (never really liked the car songs). Whereas Summer Days is really a handful of brilliant songs propped up by fillery nonsense, but it's backed by Today, which is the best pre-Pet Sounds record in terms of production and songwriting.

I've always thought Today's production didn't hold a candle to Summer Days -- but it might be the mix/mastering. For sure, the arrangements on the former are incredible (again, particularly on the second side).

not sure of much, but I will always know that Smiley Smile my answer to the thread question

Smiley Smile is my answer too. Not many people agree, but I love the Autumnal psychedelic vibe and the cover and the helium etc...

i love the imperfection

also almost zero drums (apart from Good Vibes/Heroes)

This is hardly original, but I always thought of Summer Days/Nights as something like the Revolver to Pet Sounds' Sgt Pepper. I mean that in the sense that it's the last time that the record really sounds like it's made by a band (at least until after Brian cedes control of the group some years later). So I forgive the filler the way I forgive the crappy Paul songs on Revolver, since he's so obviously integral to what makes everything else great on the other tracks. Likewise there are tons of great individual and group performances on Summer Days -- in this way "California Girls" is for me the high point of their career (also David Lee Roth's but that's another issue). But all this with the added bonus of Brian's evolving arrangements.

Although it is an amazing album, "Summer Days and Summer Night" was in a lot of ways a bunch of singles and single tracks hastily pulled together to make an album. It is still great, yes, in fact one of my fave Beach Boys albums, but a lot of the tracks were already known, some actually quite old. "Revolver" was much more of a cohesive work meant as a whole.

"Amusement Parks USA" and "Salt Lake City" are both classic early Beach Boys to me. Great songwriting.

Would have voted for Love You.

Although it is an amazing album, "Summer Days and Summer Night" was in a lot of ways a bunch of singles and single tracks hastily pulled together to make an album. It is still great, yes, in fact one of my fave Beach Boys albums, but a lot of the tracks were already known, some actually quite old.

Thanks for the info. Interesting and I can believe that its albumness is in a sense ersatz. It nevertheless does sound like a GROUP in a way that the next few records (great as they are) do not.

Well, "Pet Sounds" wasn't really the work of a group, considering most of the instrumental backing was done by sessionist while the band (minus Brian Wilson) were on tour. It still is their best work though. :)

"the crappy Paul song on 'Revolver'"

Can I just

whatever song that is, I'm sure it would be improved with some Mike Love lyrics

I mean whatever planet on which "Got to Get You Into My Life" and "For No One" are crappy must have some GREAT fucking music otherwise. I hope I can visit it one day.

Got to Get You Into My Car

Shut Down Vol. 2 has gotta be the most "uneven" album I've ever heard, timeless classics share space with utter dreck

what you don't like an entire track of Mike Love and Brian Wilson making fun of each other

What is it with Mike Love going "oink oink" on tracks he presumably doesn't like?

Beach Boys' Party "Ruby Baby", which doesn't make the album...

and something off Smile, qed.

Can I just

I don't know which songs broom air was talking about, and I would never call them "crappy", but I skip Eleanor Rigby and Here There and Everywhere every time.

What is it with Mike Love going "oink oink" on tracks he presumably doesn't like?

you should hear the Lei'd in Hawai'i outtake where he rambles about how shitty "Heroes and Villains" is over "Heroes and Villains"

Is there a decent 'Revolution in the Head' type book for the Beach Boys? Or any good bio that goes into who wrote what in depth?

Here, There and Everywhere was my and my wife's first dance at our wedding :(

Steven Gaines' "Heroes and Villains: the True Story of the Beach Boys" is amaaaaaaazing but it glosses over a fair amount of musical details. There's several Brian Wilson-centric ones (including one devoted exclusively to Pet Sounds iirc) but yeah muso-scholarship seems kinda lacking in general. Dominic Priore's "Look! Listen! Smile! Vibrate!" is a pretty amazing overview of the Smile period.

Also David leaf's mystifyingly out of print book

yeah I've never seen a copy of that

Although it is an amazing album, "Summer Days and Summer Night" was in a lot of ways a bunch of singles and single tracks hastily pulled together to make an album. It is still great, yes, in fact one of my fave Beach Boys albums, but a lot of the tracks were already known, some actually quite old. "Revolver" was much more of a cohesive work meant as a whole.

― Hongroe (Geir Hongro), Wednesday, June 29, 2011 4:44 PM (2 days ago)

http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/9996/120578034005.jpg

a month after that album came out, "Salt Lake City" was released as a promo single (b/w "Amusement Parks USA") exclusively in Salt Lake City stores.

but you're wrong about Summer Days being made up of a bunch of old single tracks. none of the tracks on that album were released as singles (or b-sides) prior to the album's release apart from an alternate version of "Help Me Rhonda". I agree though that's it's not a very cohesive album compared to something like Today.

yeah I've never seen a copy of that

I read it from the library years ago, but it's about the best book I've seen on the BBs. Another good one (with some pretty awesome illustrations and pics) is Byron Preiss' book

Thanks for the answers, will check out that Steven Gaines one.

How did Holland only get one single vote? It's not the best, but still. Is it the spoken-word narration?

I'd have to say:

1. Friends
2. Sunflower
3. Surf's Up
4. Holland
5. Pet Sounds

Or some variation of that, usually.

yeah i was gonna argue that maybe it was due to ppl picking one but in the ilx beach boys poll that had a different voting system it didn't even finish in the top 17 albums - It's About Time: Beach Boys Poll Results. it might not make my top five either tbh but it's a very solid album.

yeah, holland is weirdly absent in that album poll. i like it a lot.

because Bruce Johnston writes the songs that make ilx sing

lol Wikipedia

"Genre - Progressive rock"

Mike Love will not be pleased

He'd have been fine if we just held the poll results until he'd had a chance to compose an essay about them.

Bob Dylan as well!

I'd rate the new one (not on either poll) over everything since Love You. Best closing three songs since Surf's Up.

The one-two punch of "Honkin' Down the Highway" and "Ding Dang" are really making me favor Love You these days.

I would have went with Sunflower... Surf's Up seems to be the album that gets cited from The Beach Boys early '70s era, and while I like the album a lot and the highlights on it are amazing, I think Sunflower is more consistent in quality from start to finish (I never was a bit fan of 'Student Demonstration Time' or 'Take A Load Off Your Feet', for example).

*bit=big

I listened to some youtubes of the new one the other day and I gotta say it was much better than it had any right to be