The
Beach Boys – Love
You
CD
Album, remastered, 1991
Caribou
Records/Brother Records
Recorded
at the height of the “Brian is Back” publicity campaign when
Brian was clearly not back at all. But what is amazing is that he
could write, record, and perform this album. Love
You came out in 1977,
and at the time Brian Wilson was fat, demented, and sort of forced
out of his self-retirement by his band mates/management to work on
this album. The record before Love
You was another odd
album that was forced upon the band due that it was their 15th
Anniversary. By law anything with a zero or a 5 at the end of that
number, you must acknowledge it.
What
is sad, now looking back, is that Brian Wilson was a very ill man,
and he was sort of forced to get back to work, which may or may not
been good for his mental health. But saying that we have 14 really
odd Beach Boys songs. Not great songs, but songs of genius. It
amazes me how an album like this can get made. There must be a
'genius' button inside Brian's system, that automatically goes on.
The
album's sound has a flatness, and even though its in stereo, the
aesthetic is very much mono. On one level most of these songs are
not good, but somehow filtered through the Beach Boys sound, and the
eccentric lyrical aspect of the tunes, makes this a wonderful curious
piece of work. Songs like “Airplane” and “Johnny Carson”
captures a moment or is more likely a meditation on its subject
matter. It sounds stupid, but its really smart. The one
masterpiece song is “Honkin' Down The Highway,” which has a
beautiful melody. Al Jardine's lead vocals is perfect and it conveys
a pictorial narrative in my head that is 1950's Broadway musical.
Brian sings lead in lot of songs here, and his voice his gruff, as
well as Dennis Wilson. But their roughness adds charm, especially
when it is combined with the perfection of the other voices in the
mix.
The
Beach Boys' Love You
may not be their best album, but I think it's a work that many loves
dearly. And I really really like it.
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