REVIEW: Little Deuce Coupe - The Beach Boys (1963)

That's a weird looking dog.

 Remember what I said about the Beach Boys' release schedule being ridiculous? Well, this one was released THREE WEEKS after Surfer Girl. Unsurprisingly they chose to recycle some tracks and just shove them on the album to fill it out into 12 tracks, which I would usually be mad about, but Capitol Records' release schedule here is so bullshit I would feel wrong blaming the Beach Boys instead of them. It still kind of sucks that there's a bunch of old songs on this, though!

This is their 'concept album' about cars (except not a concept album, because the Beatles invented those with Sgt. Pepper's! (sarcasm)) and I guess you could say it represents another 'leap forward' or whatever but it came out so soon after Surfer Girl it feels kind of ridiculous to say that.

I already talked about Little Deuce Coupe, the song. It's a good song and fine to open the record with but I do wish there weren't repeats on this album. I guess I'll take it over more pointless instrumentals but whatever.

Ballad of Ole Betsy is a ballad about a car. Which is obviously kind of stupid, especially because it does some weird "the car is like a woman!" metaphor, which has VERY distressing implications with the lyric "Betsy took some beatings but she never once complained", but despite the weird premise it's a well written song and I enjoy it. I think the little tearjerk moment at the end actually got me sad once which is kind of embarrassing to admit and I do listen to this song from time to time just for fun which is more than I can say about most of the first three albums.

My thoughts on Be True to Your School are very much colored by my intense hatred for pep rallies and school spirit in general but it's a fun song! There is some debate about whether the single version or the album version is better, personally I'd choose this one. The production is far from Wall of Sound territory but it's definitely getting more layered and involved as time goes on, and this song is a good example, with the pounding drums complementing the sax, guitar and vocals very well.

Car Crazy Cutie is also fun! I'm starting to think about taking back my comment about calling this one a step forward from Surfer Girl a bit silly, because the arrangements on the new songs are definitely suggestive of where they'd end up going with All Summer Long. Obviously, this isn't some lost Pet Sounds track, but it's very fun and interesting to listen to these records chronologically - you can just hear Brian getting better at arranging and producing. He's come a long way from Surfin' Safari, that's for sure. There's definitely a lot of energy here that just was not there at all a mere year before, and the progression from the kind of limp backing vocals in Safari to the harmonies here is pretty incredible.

Cherry, Cherry Coupe feels a bit like a step backwards to my ears. The melody just isn't as interesting and while the harmonies are definitely more textured than they would've been earlier, it's just not quite there compared to the big hits off of this album and Surfer Girl. Still, if this was on Surfin USA or Safari it would've been an easy highlight, and now I'm feeling sort of meh about it! So that's impressive!

Speaking of Surfin' Safari, here's 409 again! It is kind of impressive how out of place this song sounds even though it got released a year before. It kind of feels like filler on THIS album whereas it was a highlight on its home album. It's still a good song, though, and I'm probably being too hard on it.

Next is Shut Down from USA, and you can pretty much repeat my thoughts about 409 and apply it to this song.

Spirit of America is a song about the Spirit of America car, driven by Craig Breedlove (interesting last name) and used to hit a land speed record! I am noticing this for the first time now, because the actual lyrics are kind of drowned out by the instrumental and backing vocals, which is probably not a bad thing - because let's face it, who actually remembers Craig Breedlove? Not me! It's still a good song, and even if I didn't notice what anyone was actually saying on this song, I still thought the melody was pretty good. And now that I do know what everyone's saying it's still good!

The next track is Our Car Club from Surfer Girl and like, just read the Surfer Girl review if you want to hear me talk about this one. I don't really want to review this again immediately after reviewing it once.

No-Go Showboat is one of the few new tracks here I'd really entertain as filler. The Beach Boys early on kind of had a habit of writing songs about... sort of nothing? Like on Surfin Safari where they just made a song about flipping a coin? And this one is just kind of based around the phrase "No Go Showboat", and how their car kinda sucks, which is fine, and it's a fun song, but it's not winning any awards or anything. This is one of those songs where I'm not really sure what to say about it. I don't think it brings the album down or anything and the bridge is fun but that's about all I have to say.

A Young Man Is Gone is a rearrangement of the Four Freshmen song "Their Hearts were Full of Spring" remade into a eulogy for James Dean. The harmonies are really, really pretty. I don't really care about James Dean but the harmonies are pretty enough they could be singing about taxes and I wouldn't really give a shit. Apparently Tatsuro Yamashita covered Their Hearts were Full of Spring! Thanks for letting me know, Wikipedia. I should maybe listen to that sometime.

In the Beach Boys tradition of ruining perfectly good closers with another song, we have Custom Machine! This is actually a really fun and catchy song though so I'm not nearly as mad at it. I also don't have a ton to say about it because like... it's another car song... and the instrumentation is pretty similar to all of the other songs, being a little bit surf, a little bit 50s rock and roll, and a tiny sprinkle of Brian Wilson stretching his wings. It's fun though.

It's kind of bizarre that on the previous albums they handled having extra space on the albums by adding filler, and on this album with an obvious time constraint, instead of just making a bunch of filler they just... shoved old songs on there. In terms of the non-filler songs, the amount is actually pretty similar (if not higher) than the first 3 records, as almost all of the new songs are pretty good on their own merits. I went into this one expecting to not really like it but I forgot how good most of the new songs on here are! I still think it's kind of lame there's a bunch of old tracks but it's forgivable. Another 7/10 for the Beach Boys, points deducted mostly for the old tracks. Once again you could probably convince me to give this an 8 on a good day but you have to have a high tolerance for goofy cheesiness to appreciate this era of the Beach Boys in general.