Alright, I actually posted when I said I was going to last week! Off to a good start I guess. Anyways, time to talk about one of my favorite subjects (as many of my friends know): The Beach Boys, and specifically the music they made after Pet Sounds through Love You. I think I'll talk about one of their very underrated albums today, Smiley Smile
If you know about the Beach Boys and what happened with them after Pet Sounds, you probably know that they had an album planned called Smile, that was going to be a grand psychedelic statement and rival to Sgt. Pepper's, and that Smile got cancelled because of Brian Wilson's declining mental state. The story usually goes that after that they retreated to Brian's home studio and tried to work some songs from Smile into a less ambitious, more pop-oriented project, and Smiley Smile is the album that came out of that.
If that is the story, then I don't know how the album came out this... weird? The mostly finished Smile songs sound layered, full, and arranged to a point beyond even what Pet Sounds had, and hinted at what Smile would've been, but those aren't the songs I wanna talk about here. The songs recorded at Brian's house are, in a word, tender. They sound so warm, so intimate, so personal in a way that finished studio productions never sound like, and that most home recordings aspire for. But on top of that, these songs are really really weeeeiiiird. And not just in a normal artsy way either, some of these songs are bizarre in a way I've never heard anything else be. Specifically the song She's Goin Bald is this strange, 4 part pop song, where the first part is pretty normal but a bit stripped down, but the second part features their voices speeding up until they sound like chipmunks which is followed by a manic section that sounds like a comedy routine? And then it turns into another normal pop song?? It's easily the strangest Beach Boys song, or at least the strangest good one. The other ones don't get quite as weird, but they're just as endearing. Little Pad features a false start where the whole band starts laughing, and it's just heartwarming. Wind Chimes and Wonderful, which were originally upbeat Smile tracks, are re-recorded here as slow, almost free time organ-led meditations that really bring out a strange emotion in me. Somewhere between longing and melancholy if I had to put a name to it, but it's more complex than that. They're some of my favorite recordings ever made, and they really exemplify what makes this album so special to me, which is: Tenderness
Despite trying to make a pop album to sell well, Smiley Smile came out all twisted and personal in a way that just embodies tenderness. Almost no albums make me feel this way, and certainly not while sounding so effortless, like someone got their friends together while they were having a bad day and recorded some crazy stuff in the basement to get some emotions out. Because of that, this album really does hold a special place for me. Only one other Beach Boys album hits a similar note, which I'll talk about next week! Thanks for reading, stay safe out there
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