Recorded and released in 1966, not long after the sunny, textural experiments of California Girls, Pet Sounds, aside from its importance as Brian Wilson’s evolutionary compositional masterpiece, was the first rock record that can be considered a “concept album”; from first cut to last we were treated to an intense, linear personal vision of the vagaries of a love affair and the painful, introverted anxieties that are the wrenching precipitates of the unstable chemistry of any love relationship. This trenchant cycle of love songs has the emotional impact of a shatteringly evocative novel, and by God if this little record didn’t change only the course of popular music, but the course of a few lives in the bargain. It sure as hell changed its creator, Brian, who by 1966 had been cruising along at the forefront of American popular music for four years, doling out a constant river of hit songs and producing that tough yet mellifluous sound that was the only intelligent innovation in pop music between Chuck Berry and the Beatles.
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (Full Album) zonasubterranea; 11 videos; 4,373,012 views. The Beach Boys [Pet Sounds] - Let's Go Away For A While (Stereo Remaster) by Unknown360DD.
Apr 28, 2016 - For me, Pet Sounds comes in second place in the category of. And I think that what I did change about the album (and there wasn't a whole lot. My goal was to recreate the full album 'Pet Sounds' in the style of 8-Bit chiptune, a style used for the video game systems such as the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System).
Previous Beach Boy albums were also based on strong conceptual images — the dream world of Surf, wired-up rods with metal flake paint, and curvaceous cuties lounging around the (implicitly suburban and affluent) high school. It was music for white kids; they could identify with the veneration of the leisure status which in 1963 was the ripest fruit of the American dream. It wasn’t bullshit, you could dance your silly brains away to “Get Around” or “Fun Fun Fun” if you felt like it.
But Pet Sounds….nobody was prepared for anything so soulful, so lovely, something one had to think about so much. It is by far the best album Brian has yet delivered, and it paradoxically began the decline in mass popularity that still plagues this band. It also reflected Brian’s preoccupation with pure sound. In fact, the credits on the new edition of Pet Sounds read: “This recording is pressed in monophonic sound, the way Brian cut it.” It’s a weird little touch. The tone of it is so mythologizing it sounds as if Brian were no longer among us.
The love songs of Pet Sounds begin with the gorgeous theme of frustrated mid-Sixties blueballed adolescence, “wouldn’t it be nice to stay together, hold each other close the whole night through?…” That question lays the entire premise of the album immediately in front of us. “You Still Believe In Me,” with Brian’s lovely harpsichord playing, carries the affair a little farther, through and past indescretion into the reconciliation of “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder),” sung in Brians’ wrenching, melting butter falsetto with the gentle lyrics of Tony Asher, Brian’s major collaborator in this period, at the top of their form. There are also the perceptive songs of anxiety, malaise and self-doubt — “That’s Not Me,” “I’m Waiting For the Day,” a tribute to the larger-than-life echo chambers of Phil Spector, the striking choral ensemble of “God Only Knows” and the angst-laden “I Know There’s An Answer.” Each of these tunes has its own singular flavor, one little brilliant touch — the slur of a baritone saxophone or the luxuriant tintinnabulation of Brian’s omnipresent chimes — that puts it apart from the body of the whole record.
The Pet Sounds story ends unhappily, or at least stoically. “Here Today” is an angry blaster, and portrays a pessimism and disaffection that jars with the previous optimism. It is the end of the affair, and our persona is clearly pissed. “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” is an expression of general disenchantment with just about everything, rendered politely of course, in a low-key manner. These two tunes, like the rest of the record are great not only because of the lush, dramatic arrangements, but because the strangest of the brothers Wilson has his psyche on the pulse of universal subjectivity. Being extremely aware of fantasy himself, Brian knows how most people think.
Three cuts are impossibly dated and don’t even enter into consideration: a boring cover of “Sloop John B.” that had some success as a single (with all the genius on this record, Capitol Records chose this as the single because it probably sounded truest to preconceptions about the Beach Boy “formula”). The two instrumentals, “Pet Sounds” and “Let’s Go Away For Awhile,” are pretty mood pieces and that’s all.
The final episode of Pet Sounds is “Caroline, No,” three minutes of heartbreaking pathos, a haunting ballad that is the guts of hapless melancholy, the hollow and incredulous feeling at the loss of a lover.
Ah, Pet Sounds. Ah, the wonderful 20 second trailer right out of Thomas Hart Benton with the barking dogs, the signal bells and at the railroad crossing as a fast diesel roars by towards where you are not, the barking in the distance again and then silence. Ah, Brian.
Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys elevated pop music to new artistic heights with the band's 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds. With its ingenious orchestrations and earnest lyrics, the album remains an enormous influence to this day. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Jim and Greg present a Classic Album Dissection of Pet Sounds.
Music News
'Stairway to Heaven' is one of the most well-known songs in the history of rock and roll. The 8-minute track is perhaps Led Zeppelin's most iconic number, featuring an opening guitar riff that is legendary in its own right. However, people are now speculating that the band plagiarized the riff. The '60s-era rock group Spirit released a song with a suspiciously similar intro called 'Taurus' in 1968, three years before“Stairway.” The late Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe (otherwise known as Randy California) wrote the song, and two years ago his estate filed an initial federal lawsuit alleging that Zep had ripped him off. In April, a U.S. District Judge ruled that there is sufficient evidence to move forward with the trial later this spring. To get some perspective on the case, Jim and Greg talk with Jeffrey Brown, an intellectual property attorney at Michael Best & Friedrich and former concert promoter and producer.
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On May 16, 1966, The Beach Boys released their 11th studio album, Pet Sounds. It was a relative commercial failure for what was the biggest American band of the '60s. However in the ensuing 50 years, the album's stature grew. Today, its influence pervades to the point that it is almost universally acknowledged as one of the greatest albums ever released in the rock era. With Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson taking the album on tour again this summer, Jim and Greg feel it's the perfect time to give Pet Sounds a Classic Album Dissection.
Due to a great deal of pressure, emotional turmoil, and mental health issues, Brian Wilson quit the Beach Boys as a touring entity at the end of 1964. While the rest of the band was on the road, Wilson spent ten months in the studio crafting one of the most intricate and expensive pop records ever made. Working with the famed session musicians of the Wrecking Crew, Wilson took a classical composer's approach, layering instrument upon instrument to create lush, unique timbres. He collaborated with Madison Avenue writer Tony Asher on heartbreakingly earnest lyrics about his struggles to find his place in the world. The audience, the label, and his own bandmates didn't quite know what to make of Pet Sounds when it came out. But artists from The Beatles to R.E.M. to Radiohead picked up on its brilliance and modeled their own music on Wilson's ingenious arrangements. God only knows what rock would be today without Pet Sounds.
Featured Songs
- Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin IV, Atlantic, 1971
- Spirit, Taurus, Spirit, CBS, 1968
- Stephen Stubbs, Sonata di Chitarra, e Violino, con il suo Basso Continuo (Giovanni Battista Granata), Teatro Lirico, ECM, 2006
- Dick Van Dyke, Julie Andrews, Matthew Garber, Karen Dotrice, Chim Chim Cher-ee, Mary Poppins, Buena Vista, 1964
- The Beach Boys, Sloop John B, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Four Freshmen, I Remember You, Four Freshmen and 5 Trombones, Capitol, 1955
- The Gamblers, LSD-25, Moon Dawg! / LSD-25, World Pacific, 1960
- The Beach Boys, I'm Waiting for the Day, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, Here Today, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, When I Grow Up (To Be a Man), The Beach Boys Today!, Capitol, 1965
- The Beach Boys, Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, Wouldn't It Be Nice, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, Let's Go Away for Awhile, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, Caroline No, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, You Still Believe in Me, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, Hang on to Your Ego, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, Wouldn't It Be Nice, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, That's Not Me, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, God Only Knows, Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- The Beach Boys, Little Deuce Coupe, Little Deuce Coupe, Capitol, 1963
- The Beatles, Nowhere Man, Rubber Soul, Parlophone, 1965
- The Beatles, She's Leaving Home, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967
- Nick Drake, Fly, Bryter Layter, Island, 1971
- The Olivia Tremor Control, Frosted Ambassador, Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle, Flydaddy, 1996
- R.E.M., Near Wild Heaven, Out of Time, Warner Bros., 1991
- Animal Collective, Guys Eyes, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Domino, 2009
- The Beach Boys, Trombone Dixie (Highlights from Tracking Date), Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966
- ABBA, Ring Ring, Ring Ring, Polydor, 1973
- Brian Eno, The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch, Here Come the Warm Jets, Editions EG, 1973
- Prince and The Revolution, I Would Die 4 U, Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984
- Prince, The Ride (Live), Crystal Ball, NPG, 1998
- Prince, Uptown, Dirty Mind, Warner Bros., 1980
- Nine Inch Nails, Head Like a Hole, Pretty Hate Machine, TVT, 1989