“The best Beach Boys album, and one of the best of the 1960s. The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon tracks of vocals and instruments to create a richly symphonic sound. Conventional keyboards and guitars were combined with exotic touches of orchestrated strings, bicycle bells, buzzing organs, harpsichords, flutes, the theremin, Hawaiian-sounding string instruments, Coca-Cola cans, barking dogs, and more. It wouldn't have been a classic without great songs, and this has some of the group's most stunning melodies, as well as lyrical themes that evoke both the intensity of newly born love affairs and the disappointment of failed romance (add in some general statements about loss of innocence and modern-day confusion as well). The spiritual quality of the material is enhanced by some of the most gorgeous upper-register male vocals (especially by Brian and Carl Wilson) ever heard on a rock record. "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "God Only Knows," "Caroline No," and "Sloop John B" are the well-known hits, but equally worthy are such cuts as "You Still Believe in Me," "Don't Talk," "I Know There's an Answer," and "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times." It's often said that this is more of a Brian Wilson album than a Beach Boys recording (session musicians played most of the parts), but it should be noted that the harmonies are pure Beach Boys (and some of their best). Massively influential upon its release (although it was a relatively low seller compared to their previous LPs), it immediately vaunted the band into the top level of rock innovators among the intelligentsia. The 1990 CD reissue added a few interesting but inessential outtakes, and a 1999 reissue added a new stereo version of the entire album to the original mono program.”
The Beatles adored it, and the Rolling Stones took out an ad in the British music papers urging everybody to buy it: Pet Sounds is not only the Beach Boys' best album but also one of the undisputed classics of the '60s. Written (save for an adaptation of the old folk song "Sloop John B.") by head Beach Boy Brian Wilson and a young advertising copywriter named Tony Asher, the album is a melancholy meditation on adulthood, desire, and failed romance. Featuring stunning melodies ("God Only Knows"), intricate vocal arrangements ("Wouldn't It Be Nice"), and innovative instrumentals ("Let's Go Away for Awhile"), Pet Sounds was, in 1966, also a staggering technical accomplishment. Working the old-fashioned way -- that is, without the benefit of synthesizers and samplers -- Wilson created a rich, symphonic sound by blending multiple vocal tracks and conventional keyboards and guitars with harpsichords, flutes, and Hawaiian-tinged strings, then added a panoply of sound effects: bicycle bells, Coca-Cola cans, a Theremin, barking dogs. Although only a moderate hit upon its release, Pet Sounds has proved hugely influential over the years. In 1997 it was rereleased as a four-CD box set, including one disc of a never-before-heard stereo mix. The 1999 reissue marks the first release of the stereo version (plus the mono original) on a single CD. Bottom line: A masterpiece.
This is more than just an album by a great American band; it's THE great American pop album, an ambitious foray into the intricacies of harmony and melody. Masterminded by Brian Wilson, it changed the rules of rock & roll. Wilson's production brought record-making to a new level. He perfected Phil Spector's wall-of-sound into a more complex, stunning approach. He was inspired by the Beatles' RUBBER SOUL, and PET SOUNDS was, in turn, an inspiration for SGT. PEPPER.
The devoutly romantic "God Only Knows" and the hopeful "Wouldn't It Be Nice" reflect an innocent time of yearning post-adolescence. From the complex upward progressions of "You Still Believe In Me" to the heartbeat bass of "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)," Wilson paid attention to every nanosecond of sound. The traditional folk song "Sloop John B," with its thickly interwoven vocals, was a major hit for the band, but PET SOUNDS' astonishing power comes from its less familiar songs. The shifting moods and devious instrumentation of "I'm Waiting For The Day" and the revealing "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" are further testaments to Wilson's tortured genius. Wilson has said that angels were overseeing the production of PET SOUNDS; there is no doubt about it.
The devoutly romantic "God Only Knows" and the hopeful "Wouldn't It Be Nice" reflect an innocent time of yearning post-adolescence. From the complex upward progressions of "You Still Believe In Me" to the heartbeat bass of "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)," Wilson paid attention to every nanosecond of sound. The traditional folk song "Sloop John B," with its thickly interwoven vocals, was a major hit for the band, but PET SOUNDS' astonishing power comes from its less familiar songs. The shifting moods and devious instrumentation of "I'm Waiting For The Day" and the revealing "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" are further testaments to Wilson's tortured genius. Wilson has said that angels were overseeing the production of PET SOUNDS; there is no doubt about it.
Pet Sounds is always there or thereabouts on the list of all-time greatest albums. Rightly so. This is the jewel in Brian Wilson's considerable crown and a landmark for pop music on its way from gangling adolescence to something approaching maturity. He may have only had one good ear, but he put it to impossibly good use on creating a cycle of songs that was the polar opposite of the Fun, Fun, Fun mentality that The Beach Boys had previously espoused. Amid lustrous harmonies and sculpted arrangements, here was a voice that was instead riven by a sense of isolation and self-doubt as youth's bloom inexorably began to fade. God Only Knows is the obvious centrepiece, but I Just Wasn't Made For These Times and Caroline No are equally exquisite examples of Wilson's timeless art. About as good as it gets.
And finally, the very famous Rolling Stone magazine views Pet Sounds as:
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 master piece, 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 mellifluouis sound that was the only intelligent innovation in pop music between Chuck Berry and the Beatles.
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 preoccuapation 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 lust, 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.
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 preoccuapation 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 lust, 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.
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