2 poems

 2 poems i wroted

poem 1 for december

stepped out into the garden
and said,
i need no other's touch
for i live in my own dreams
and flew and flew and flew
until a crumbling piece
crashed into the vineyard
red columns and angles
strewn round
angles and colors and
deep maroon red red
and said,
i walk in circles every day
and i never have to walk out

poem 2 for december

if i went on a walk in a park
and you told me about your grandmother
and i would sip some water
and you would flash that little grin
from one corner of your mouth

and i'd fall in love again
and i'd walk up and say,
"i wrote this poem about being gay,
i think, i don't know what it means"
and you'd laugh

and then i'd forget again
tap on the edge of my display case
i am a salamander in a zoo
and i am forgetting who you are
and i forgot what 'poem' means

and the zookeeper would take me out
and say, 'it's time for your daily rub'
words spoken without expectations
of being understood
then, it would be acceptable

i wrote a thing ??? midnight its midnight hello :D

i dont even know what this is i wrote it last night in like two minutes but i guess you have to look at it now. sorry. i guess you could call it a poem but that feels weird. it's not a story. it's. i don't know if this counts as prose? even? i'm not sure. whatever. actually i'm not going to apologize i am not sorry i crafted this whole funky thing out of little bits of clay and i can kick it down the line if i Want to.


the nightfly

it was a cool september night in november and i sat and you and i and i and november and what and you and november and what and i sat at a two feet by four feet by about two and a half feet metal desk with legs with many legs with uncountable number of leg and i sat down and i thought about what i would like to eat for dinner and i decided on a salad and it made me happy to have decided something and it made me happy to have decided on a salad and i walked out of the door and i sat down at a chair which was one of those office chairs with legs and it sat at the desk and it sat and the desk had legs and i sat at the desk and i opened up my computer and i looked for microsoft excel and i booted up microsoft excel and and i saw the moon through a window cold breeze a light shades of blue and i looked for my computer and the desk was metallic and it had legs and i am your family so let me into your house

interchangeably;

 

do you think britney spears knows what she means to so many people 

"I think I killed my friend" and 37 other funny sentences

      37 funny sentences

1. I think I killed my friend
2. These are the benefits of being a marine biologist.
3. Don't worry, it's just cancer.
4. The philistines have uttered their pronouncements - I'm splittin'.
5. My mom called me a 'catch' yesterday.
6. I'm afraid of that tree.
7. Why does that squirrel look like that?
8. Do you want to go out for dinner?
9. I'm sorry, I'm busy.
10. I think it would be fun to have facial paralysis for about a week.
11. Sorry, I'm allergic to fire.
12. Does anyone else here like the Beatles?
13. Where am I?
14. I look up at the stars sometimes and I contemplate the futility of my existence.
15. I had a dream last night where you asked me what I wanted to do with my life.
16. You'd do great on Adderall.
17. This is funny sentence number seventeen.
18. Did you know that male seahorses get pregnant?
19. You're beautiful.
20. Nineteenth century French history tastes like a freshly baked apple.
21. I tried to make Akinator guess Tonetta, and it didn't work.
22. I could never be pregnant.
23. I know a lot of people from Ohio.
24. I find being scared unpleasant, but a lot of people enjoy being scared.
25. This table has six legs.
26. We drove to Tiffin and went to a fancy restaurant and I had chicken.
27. Do you think he knows where he is right now?
28. The number of legs that this table has is uncountable.
29. I hope God kills you.
30. It's Worm day for the worms.
31. I hope I impress you like a synthesizer.
32. The patient appears to be responding well to the spleement (spleen treatment).
33. I hate you so much.
34. Do you think dogs have any concept of geography?
35. The other side of the ocean contains gleaming paradise, and we can sit there awash in ecstasy.
36. Take off your clothes.
37. I hope Kerbal Space Program 2 isn't disappointing, but I think it will be.

i wrote a short story (also sorry for hiatus)

 HELLO I am sorry for hiatus on my blog blog. I have been busy at collej. It turns out being at home and being sick and having absolutely nothing to do is a large motivator to me writing bullshit. But it is apparently not the ONLY motivator because I wrote an extremely inscrutable short story this weekend. Well not inscrutable. It definitely means something but I don't know what that thing is. Maybe you can figure it out.

It is entitled 'mimi do you love her now' and the friends that I have showed it to seem to think it's pretty good.

So check it out if you want. The story won't bite you. I might, though. Probably not.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-mrrqGwgRn5J0NllyxQrgUDK4Ai9uKNB9wuQKuIYxiM/edit?usp=sharing

I will be on thanksgiving break soon and will hopefully return with more nonsense. And maybe more stories. Who knows.

REVIEW: Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) - The Beach Boys (1965)

Look at shirtless Mike Love. Behold him.

 Discounting the last filler track, Today! ended with a big question mark in the form of "In The Back Of My Mind", and it feels a little deliberate that this record begins with a saxophone line followed by a bit of decidedly low-key, lighthearted fun in the form of "The Girl from New York City". This album is viewed as a bit of a backwards step by a lot of people, mostly because the songs are about having fun in the summer time again, and not about relationship issues and being depressed. I don't think that assessment is totally fair, but it is a bit interesting how close some of Today! seems to be to Pet Sounds.

My big criticism with Today! is that some of the arrangements are a bit muddy. There just seems to be too much. This is also, probably not coincidentally, my big problem with Phil Spector's form of production! None of the instruments have any time to breathe and everything is just a big mush of session musicians and the whole arrangement ends up sounding like mush. I present the probably controversial argument that this album represents Brian paring things back a little and that's a good thing.

The actual songs are mostly weaker, though. I'm not going to sit here and make the argument that "Salt Lake City" is better than "Kiss Me Baby" or "When I Grow Up To Be A Man" because one of those songs just makes me wonder why Brian Wilson is going after Mormon chicks and the other two are really good. And "Amusement Parks USA" is probably the most self-consciously goofy Beach Boys song since "Cuckoo Clock", for better or worse.

There's a lot of things to like here, though! "Then I Kissed Her" is an excellent Spector cover, better than the original in my opinion. "Girl Don't Tell Me" is an unabashedly harmony-less, Beatlesque number, pretty unusually stripped back for a Beach Boys song of this era. (The little guitar lick is pretty obviously stolen from "Ticket To Ride", though.)

"Help Me, Rhonda" is definitely better than the version on Today, and one of the classic Beach Boys singles. It's very catchy! It's also a bit hard for me to earnestly review pop songs this poppy because there's not a lot intelligent to say here. Like, I don't know, I like the part where they sing "Help me, Rhonda yeah", and the chorus is catchy. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

"California Girls" is one of the Beach Boys songs that people love to write about because the instrumental is so ornate and pretty and complicated and then the vocals are just "Wow, girls are hot!" Controversial opinion, I think this is a good song. I think it's okay to write a song which is just about girls being hot if the rest of the song is good enough, and this song is definitely good enough. Also - and this is a big myth - a lot of people want to believe the part of this song Brian wrote 'under the influence' was the beautiful intro, because drugs make you make good art or something. It was actually the bass line, which Brian is adamant he stole from Bach, of all people.

"Let Him Run Wild" feels like a vastly sunnier and cheerier take on the lush romantic sadness of the second half of Today!, and while there's a fair bit of melancholy on this one, too, it's intensely outweighed by the sheer pop candyfloss of the chorus. "You're So Good To Me" takes the whole "sunnier and cheerier" thing to the logical extreme, being one of the most frighteningly catchy songs ever devised. I'm like 99% sure those "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA" backing vocals were cooked up in a lab somewhere. If the other pop songs on this album are hard to critically analyze, this song outright resists it - if you're reading into the lyrics to ascribe some sort of artistic importance, you are clearly doing it wrong. This is the type of song you're supposed to listen to and enjoy, not listen to and analyze, and you're listening to the fucking Beach Boys, so that's okay.

"Summer Means New Love" is the first non-surf instrumental on a Beach Boys record, starting a new tradition of orchestrally arranged, moderately easy listening-ish instrumentals. It's probably not going to win any awards, but the string arrangements here are quite good, and I'm not going to dislike anyone for making me listen to a relaxing and lush instrumental by one of the great producer-arrangers of all time.

"I'm Bugged At My Old Dad" is the closest thing to filler here. It's also intensely uncomfortable to listen to, knowing that Brian's dad, Murry, was in fact kind of a shithead. If you can convince yourself to ignore all of that it's sorta fun! I guess. Maybe. I'm probably giving it too much credit.

"And Your Dream Comes True" is a short and pleasant little acapella number to close out the record. Congratulations, Beach Boys! You actually chose a sensible song to end the album with!

I'm going to slap another 8/10 on this but I will clarify I do like Today! a bit better. The catchy songs here are just so goddamn catchy and considering my undeniably high tolerance for 60s cheese I am mostly okay with the rest! This is not a universal opinion and I am totally fine with that!

Catch me next time when I review one of the most iconic and critically acclaimed albums of all time, perhaps the definitive statement of one of the great American bands, the famous, the classic, the one and only... Beach Boys' Party!

REVIEW: The Beach Boys Today! - The Beach Boys (1965)

No, "Bull Session with Big Daddy" is not a great new song written by Brian Wilson.

 Side A of All Summer Long was definitely a big step forward for the band in terms of arrangements and instrumentation, but this album is really where the band started firing on all cylinders - making whole albums that were at the very least uniformly good and where all of the songs were immaculately arranged and produced. Now, don't get me wrong, this album isn't perfect! There's still one very obvious piece of filler on it, the sound is still a bit muddy, there are some choices which were perhaps slightly overambitious - but compared to where the band was just a few years ago, it's pretty astounding.

The album starts out on a very strong note with a cover of "Do You Want To Dance" by Bobby Freeman, here given the much less lame title "Do You Wanna Dance". The first thing to note about this song is that it contains a rare lead vocal from Dennis, which ends up serving the song well, even though he's not as technically proficient as either of his brothers. The weird teenage nerviness of his voice ends up fitting the theme of the song perfectly in a way that a more 'choir boy' performance from Carl or Brian wouldn't. It's also self evident that this song is a banger. The arrangement is excellent in its imitation of Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound', and is one of the first Beach Boys songs to include most of the Wrecking Crew, a famous Los Angeles group of backing musicians that would go on to be heavily used by Brian. (Carl's still playing the guitar, though.)

"Good to My Baby" is pretty traditional Beach Boys fair, a lighthearted song about monogamy and loving women and stuff, and it's also pretty damn good. Maybe it doesn't quite reach the introspective heights as some of the other songs on this record, but it's pretty close to a perfection of the 'Beach Boys formula' with back and forth vocals from Brian and Mike and some moderately surf-y guitar underpinning the whole thing.

"Don't Hurt My Little Sister" has a slightly weirder concept and lyrical conceit than most Beach Boys songs of this era and it becomes even weirder when you realize it's probably about the then-teenage Rovell sisters! (Brian married Marilyn Rovell, with a very concerning age gap, between when the song was recorded and when the album was released.) Which is pretty messed up. Ignoring that, it's a good song, though. Once again, not that notable, aside from the fact Brian gave it to Phil Spector to record and he agreed and then kicked Brian out of the recording session for "substandard playing".

"When I Grow Up To Be A Man" is an unusually introspective single choice for the Beach Boys at this point - the lyrics speak to losing youth and changing in personality as you grow up, a pretty far cry from the "Surfing is fun!" of most of their previous up-tempo hits. It's also got some great harpsichord. I always thought the backing vocals were a bit goofy at the end with the increasing years but it's goofy in an endearing way... if that makes any sense?

"Help Me Ronda" would later be remade as a single for their next album with an added 'H' in the title, and I prefer that version more. But it's a still very fun and catchy song and I get why it did unexpectedly well for an album cut.

"Dance, Dance, Dance" is just pure sugar rush in song form. It feels unfair to criticize this because it's so perfect at doing explicitly what it sets out to do - which is, 'be an incredibly catchy pop song that never once demands you to critically think'. And I think there's a place for that in the world! Also there's a key change in the middle of the verse so that's kind of interesting I guess. I don't know. It's "Dance, Dance, Dance". I think you can surmise what it's about by reading precisely one third of the title.

"Please Let Me Wonder" kicks off the much-acclaimed Side B of this record, AKA the "slow and introspective songs about being in love and also being very sad" side. And indeed it's a beautiful, yearning love song, with some positively ethereal backing vocals. It's also a little bit pathetic - it's basically a song about being in love with an idea of a person versus the actual thing, and preferring not to know the truth about whether or not said person loves you. The arrangement is so perfect and the melody is so wonderfully lilting that it ends up making you feel a little bad for the guy, sufficiently bad enough that Brian actually gets away with whispering "I love you" melodramatically into the microphone at the end.

"I'm So Young" starts off with the line "I have a girlfriend", so you'd think it would be slightly cheerier, but not really! This one is a cover about puppy love and not being able to marry each other yada yada yada. And it's a really good cover too, with some GORGEOUS harmonies and wonderfully reverb-y production. Similarly to a lot of Spector's classic love songs, this is an easy one to get lost in, with so many layers of vocals and guitar work, and an absolutely ethereal Hammond organ underpinning it. It's just beautiful melancholy and honestly one of the highlights on the album for me despite being a cover.

"Kiss Me, Baby" is one of my favorite Beach Boys songs and one of those songs I like enough I have trouble actually writing about it! Just like every other song on this half of the album, it's ANOTHER yearning, melancholic, slightly pathetic love song. I really adore the way syncopation is used on this one and the production is just so wonderfully reverb-y and ethereal. The highlight, though, is the chorus which is absolutely beautiful. I'm pretty convinced that the harmonies in the chorus are what angels sound like. It's one of those beautifully layered Brian Wilson arrangements, with the bass vocals underpinning everything rhythmically and a melodic falsetto soaring over the rest of the song.

"She Knows Me Too Well" carries on the same general themes as the last couple songs, with some really pretty chord changes and an arrangement that does a good job of resisting the obvious. This one would have probably sounded pretty out there to a listener coming hot off the heels of All Summer Long, but in retrospect it suggests where the band would end up heading the year after.

"In the Back of My Mind" has another Dennis Wilson vocal, and I frankly don't think he fits as well on this one. To be fair, the hesitancy of his vocal performance is certainly reflected by the song! It's paranoid and unsure of itself, and unusually mellow and obtuse for a song from a pop group in 1965. The past few songs suggested romantic troubles, but this one seems to be hiding something a bit darker. The narrator has everything he could ever want, but he's terrified of something. His wife cheating on him is sort of implied, but there's a bizarre feeling of dread imbued here, and the ambiguity of the lyrics certainly isn't helping matters. The song ends with Dennis practically yelping followed by the orchestra falling apart on itself, not too dissimilar to what the Beatles would later end up doing with "A Day in the Life". There's no harmonies on this one, even! It would be a creepy, depressing, impactful, and moving ending of the album if it was the end, but in classic Beach Boys fashion, the band refuses to end their album in a normal way and shoves some filler on here to get it to 12 tracks. "Bull Session with Big Daddy" is an interview or something. It's pretty pointless except for the fact there's apparently a Capitol Records executive named "Dick Rising", which is a fantastic name.

I'm going to slap an 8/10 on this one. It's definitely brought down by the fact that the mix is a bit muddy, but considering it's from 1965 and has never gotten a great remaster, that's more or less expected. "Bull Session" has no reason to exist and a few of the songs on Side A don't hold up quite as well as the rest of the album, but it's definitely the best Beach Boys record I've reviewed so far. See you next time for Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), which is a fantastic album title.

REVIEW: The Beach Boys' Christmas Album - The Beach Boys (1964)

There are basically no uploads of this cover in good quality :(

 Hello! I am sufficiently awake now that I am able to return to my self-imposed duties of reviewing the Beach Boys. Today I have something sacrilegious to announce - I've never actually heard this one (until today, that is)! You see, I always feel distressed listening to Christmas music, because when it's not December it feels wrong and when it IS December I'm so inundated with the stuff it feels ridiculous to voluntarily listen to more when it's being beamed directly into my frontal lobe from every direction.

That and I'm a fake fan.

Anyways this album was mostly recorded in the span of about two weeks soon after All Summer Long was completed. In June. So that's fun and not terrifying.

Now that I've actually heard this one I feel like I have wispy memories of hearing a few of these songs on Christmas radio stations, obviously including Little Saint Nick - which is unsurprising considering the radio DJs have to get tired of playing the same 3 songs over and over. It also might just be because half the songs sound the same. Overall this album isn't a major artistic statement or anything. But I'm not the literal fucking Grinch, so I will acknowledge this is a Christmas album and that is categorically not the point.

This album is divided neatly into two parts. Side A is original Christmas songs by Brian & Mike, Side B are standards with the Boys' voices and arrangements by Dick Reynolds, arranger for the Four Freshman, a vocal group Brian famously idolized and most other people don't really care about at all. And when I say these arrangements are schmaltzy you best believe that they are SCHMALTZY. It's a little bit funny hearing the Boys sing on something so blatantly schmaltz! Hearing the mid-60s Beach Boys on anything other than Brian Wilson's arrangements feels a little bit uncanny and evil, especially hearing them try to sing old religious Christmas standards. You'd think maybe these two things would end up working and it'd be enjoyable to listen to but there's a reason why people remember Little Saint Nick and not the Boys trying to do We Three Kings Of Orient Are for 4 minutes. The discrepancy in length is a little bit funny considering literally all of the originals clock in at under 2 minutes.

I don't really see much of a point in going track by track because the two sides are pretty uniform. Side A is fun but bare-bones original songs that don't have much in the terms of fleshed out arrangements, Side B is schmaltz which is good if you somehow like Christmas schmaltz and pretty uninteresting to anyone except the most devotee superfans if you don't. I will say that Mike Love singing "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake" makes an already pretty scary song terrifying.

The last track, Auld Lang Syne, contains what I'm pretty sure is an attempt to wake the listener back up when Dennis randomly jumps in to wish everyone a merry Christmas. Thank you, Dennis, I guess?

I'm going to slap a 5/10 on this one because it's not currently December and I don't know why you'd seek this one out versus the previous Beach Boys record or the next Beach Boys record. If it is currently December, then adjust this score up to a 6 because the originals are decently fun. Especially Little Saint Nick.

Anyways, see you next time for The Beach Boys Today!, a significantly better record.

two tweets i did

 hello unfortunately i am really tired from COVID again i will return with beach boys soon hopefully. here are 2 tweets i made which are true and legendary

"im doing my best. i try my best every day. im really trying to work on myself so one day i can mean a lot to a nice person like me and one day i can do a lot of good in the world. and there are some things out there that are scary but i wont let it harsh my vibe anymore"

"i just want someone who will give me silly little compliments and then wriggle around in the dunes... like some kind of quicksilver mercury type of thing... just fully windmilling your way through it. because what else can you do? slippery"

the second one is inspired by a very bizarre dream i had which had many twists and turns but i can unfortunately only remember the end, where i somehow deduced that "I'm slippery!" is the platonic ideal of pickup lines as it is gender neutral, makes 0 assumptions about the other person, and is highly seductive (???).

if anyone would like to wriggle around in the dunes i think you should do that and i believe in you! :-)

remember to breathe,
jack

REVIEW: All Summer Long - The Beach Boys (1964)

I really like this album cover so here's a big, pretty HQ version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This album is definitely the most 'progressive' work the Boys had made up to this point, and frankly - this is DEFINITELY sacrilege - this is the first Beach Boys record I actually come back to as an album. The British Invasion had officially commenced, and after Beatlemania, the Beach Boys knew that they had to react in order to not get swept up in the deluge - and indeed they did! All Summer Long is quite obviously their lushest record so far, and you could definitely make the case that it's the best. I was a bit tired of writing more-or-less the same thing for a bunch of songs for the last couple albums, so I'm very grateful for getting to the album where Brian really starts to stretch his wings as a producer - just listen to that guitar on Little Honda, or those pounding drums on Hushabye, or the layers to All Summer Long. Which is to say - I would probably take this one over the last few. (I have playlists of the first couple records with the filler excised. Sorry, not sorry!) Not to say I don't love Fun, Fun, Fun or Surfer Girl or any of their other early hits! But I don't think it's as big of a stretch to say this record is a leap forward - albeit maybe not as big of one as some people make it out to be.

Of course, it's not like this record is a hidden masterpiece on the level of Pet Sounds. Compared to the complexity and lushness of Today or Summer Days (and Summer Nights), this record still sounds a little bit bare - but it's hard for me to take points off for that. And as I'll get into, the second half doesn't quite live up to the new sounds of Side A. Still, this album is probably the pinnacle of the 'California Sound', before the Boys ended up experimenting further - but that experimentation is one of my favorite things about them. It's not an issue on this record, but I am very glad they branched out.

And it's also not like the Beach Boys instantly went from nothing to something here, either - Little Deuce Coupe and Shut Down, Volume 2 were both admittedly rush jobs, and even then, they definitely had signs of where the Beach Boys would end up heading. In the two years between Surfin' Safari and this album, the Beach Boys have come a long way, and it's not like they split all of said distance in a few months.

Still, though, "I Get Around" is probably the best of their up tempo singles up to this point. It's one of those songs where everything just... works. Listening to these records in sequence, I've been really struck by how the Boys constantly seemed to be iterating on their own records - going from "Surfin" to "Surfin USA" to "Fun, Fun, Fun" - and this song seems like the natural end of that progression. It's catchy, a load of fun, and manages to be lush and immediate at the same time - just enough layers in the arrangement to get lost in the song, but the production job never threatens to overtake the melody itself or subdue the "rock" part of "surf rock". There's a reason this song is still known and beloved, and if you haven't heard it... maybe stick your head out of the rock you've been living under?

All Summer Long (which unfortunately gives you results for some Kid Rock song now when you look it up...) is also fantastic. I have no idea how to articulate my feelings on it better than that this song just EXUDES summery vibes. Everything from the lyrics to the instrumentation just immediately makes me think of summer - not summer just by itself - but the mythic ideal of an American summer. Lounging on a California beach, having a picnic for lunch, watching surfers, it's all the exact kind of lifestyle that the "California Sound" elevated into legend, and I don't think there's a single song in the Beach Boys canon that captures that more succinctly than this.

Hushabye is the first Beach Boys song where I immediately go "oh, yeah, he's going for Phil Spector here" - and of course it sounds fantastic. The combination of angelic harmonies, pounding drums, and piano is fantastic, and although it's a cover I have to complement the Boys in selecting it and adapting it. The melody is angelic and the whole thing is complemented in the best way possible by the overall arrangement.

Little Honda is maybe my favorite of the early Beach Boys rockers that never ended up as singles. Just listen to that guitar! If "I Get Around" didn't exist this would be the obvious choice for single, I'd say, but fortunately it does. This is still definitely one of the best Beach Boys car songs, and the arrangement really shows that Brian was starting to add some gorgeous texture into his songs. Something about the low hum of the backing vocals combined with the guitar really "saturates the tape with sound", as Van Dyke Parks would say (a quote that I am probably going to use repeatedly, because it really captures one of my favorite elements of BW's production style)

We'll Run Away is my personal pick for a great Beach Boys song that everyone seems to constantly forget about. The moment at 0:30 where the instrumental suddenly cuts out as a harmony comes in is just perfect - it might be a trick that Brian would reuse, but it's just great. This is a very yearning, teenage angst-y love song, one of those classic blissfully romantic 60s tunes. The only thing I don't like about it is how Brian randomly goes out of tune at the end. It has to be on purpose... but like.. why?

I will momentarily stop gushing about this record because there's another fucking surf instrumental. Thank the Lord that this is the last one I will have to deal with - and also thank the Lord it's actually sort of good. It's not astonishing or anything but it's fun! For filler. It's still bringing the album down. If this is "Carl's Big Chance", I don't know if Carl is making the team. Sorry Carl.

Side B also kicks off well with "Wendy", which is also pretty filler-y, but still good enough that it would've been a highlight on... pretty much all of their albums before this. It's catchy, it's charming, it's fun, it's well arranged.

Do You Remember is a slightly less charming ode to the original rock'n'rollers. It's still fun! Not really anything to write home about or that I'd listen to by myself. 

Girls on the Beach is another ballad - and once again, it feels a little bit beneath most of Side A - but it's still very, very good. Their harmonies are just fucking gorgeous and I will absolutely sit here and listen to whatever schlock just to hear them. And you can also really tell that Brian's skills in arranging everyone's vocals are improving as time goes on! Shout out Brian Wilson.

Drive In is also a fun car song, which similarly would be a highlight in most of the albums before this. It's definitely very catchy. And car. It's very car.

Our Favorite Recording Sessions is stupid filler.

Don't Back Down is yet another fun catchy surf song. I am really running out of things to say about these semi-generic but still enjoyable surf songs. I like ... I like how they sing. I don't know! It's good!

Overall Side A of this record is a pretty dramatic change for the better. Side B... not so much! But it's still very enjoyable and I would definitely say this is my favorite Beach Boys record up to this point. 8/10. Points deducted for Our Favorite Recording Sessions and Carl's Big Chance, but I am listening to this record in 2022 and I have this thing called a skip button.

REVIEW: Shut Down, Vol 2 - The Beach Boys (1964)

Those are weird looking surfboards.

 First of all I should explain why this one is called Shut Down, Volume 2 because it's one of the stupidest album titles of all time.

Essentially, Capitol put the song Shut Down on this compilation album with various artists on it, which was also called Shut Down, and it sold a bunch of copies, and for some reason they decided to call the next Beach Boys album "Shut Down Volume 2". Yes, this album is a sequel to a various artists compilation. Yes, that makes no fucking sense.

In other news, David Marks is out and Al Jardine is in on rhythm guitar, so this is pretty much the classic Beach Boys lineup now of Brian, Carl, Dennis, Mike and Al that will continue (with some additions) until they start dying off. So that's fun!

This album starts off with a bang with Fun, Fun, Fun, which is one of the quintessential Beach Boys singles and one of those songs that most people have probably heard. Maybe they don't know that they've heard it but they've probably heard it at some point or another. And it is indeed a really good fucking song, with a catchy chorus, a fun instrumental break, and some really fun backing vocals in the verses.
It's followed up strongly by Don't Worry Baby, Brian's would-be answer to Phil Spector's Be My Baby, and while Be My Baby is definitely better Don't Worry Baby is no slouch either. As a ballad, it definitely stands up to the Beach Boys' previous best, although I personally think they'd go on to do even better.
In The Parkin' Lot ups the tempo again and is also a really fun, catchy song, with a very pretty tag showing off the Beach Boys' harmonies, which are excellent (at this point in their career that's to be expected).
Unfortunately it's followed up by the very blatant filler "Cassius Love vs Sonny Wilson" that basically involves the Beach Boys yelling at each other and then singing badly. It does kind of presage the eventual Brian vs Mike rivalry (that in my opinion is way overstated, but more on that later...) so it's interesting in that respect. But obviously it's cheesy and stupid and functions mainly to take up space on the record.
Back to an excellent ballad with The Warmth of the Sun, which I honestly might prefer to Don't Worry Baby. It's a very pretty ballad with a lot of nice ambiance and wistful seventh chords, and of course a typically excellent vocal from Brian to top it off.
Speaking of typically excellent vocals from the Beach Boys, I kinda don't like Dennis on This Car of Mine! I'm sure Brian was being nice when he gave him the lead vocals but something about the way he sings the 'o's in this song just sort of infuriates me. Thankfully the song itself is pretty boring so it's not much of a loss.
Why Do Fools Fall in Love is a Frankie Lymon cover and it's definitely a serviceable cover of the song. I don't think it'll really win any awards by itself but it's a nice slice of classic 50s pop songwriting done well. Brian sounds a little bit more like Frankie Valli here than usual, which is interesting. My immature brain also thinks it's funny that the Beach Boys sing the word gay on this one. Yes, I am mentally 12 years old.
I got into an argument about this midway through writing this very review but Pom Pom Play Girl is like... fine. I don't know. A lot of fans think this is underrated (including Mark Linett, one of the main archivists for the band, who keeps putting it on compilations) but I don't really see it? It's just kinda fun for like 2 minutes and then it ends. Not very remarkable.
Keep an Eye on Summer is another very good ballad! Their ballads are starting to get a bit formulaic, but it's an obviously winning formula, so I'm not going to sit here and complain. Another falsetto lead from Brian with another understated arrangement with guitar, bass and drums.
Shut Down, Vol. 2. is another surf instrumental. This one is fun I guess. I don't know. I ran out of things to say about the surf instrumentals by like the third one.
Next there's a cover of Louie Louie where the Beach Boys go R&B sorta kinda and it just ends up sounding a little stupid. It's still fun and Louie Louie is a good song but I would never put this on the aux. the "DUH DUH, DUH DUH" backing vocals are so goofy I kind of have to applaud them.
Next up is Denny's Drums which is... just a drum solo. Riveting.

The first three songs and Warmth of the Sun are great, but the rest is just a bit too fillerific for my tastes. I don't really have a ton to say about this one because unlike the past 4 records, there isn't really any new ground or progression here. Next up is All Summer Long, which tends to get earmarked as the start of the Beach Boys' "leap forward" to the complexity of Pet Sounds, which I'm really not sure I buy - but in any case it's a more interesting record!
A begrudging 6/10 on this one, maybe sliding to a 5/10. Anything less would be a disgrace to the three or four great tracks here, anything more would be a little bit silly for an album with "Cassius Love vs Sonny Wilson" and "Denny's Drums".

 

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.