Following that commercial failure, there were various changes in the Beach Boys camp which led to the consolidation of Carl Wilson's position as nominal head of the band. Brian was in a mental wonderland and was incapable of overseeing the opening of a bag of crisps let alone the recording of albums and with Carl at the reins the tone of the Beach Boys changed comprehensively. The downbeat sounds and thematic preoccupations hinted at by parts of 20/20 and Sunflower became the focus and 1971's Surf's Up proclaims its mood from the cover art onwards. This is an album that has environmental as well as emotional concerns to the forefront and despite the presence of some lightweight jokes and experiments ('Take a Load Off Your Feet', the brutally gloomy 'A Day in the Life of a Tree', Mike Love's disastrous 'Student Demonstration Time'), this is a hugely impressive slab of post-60's reappraisal. Carl's 'Long Promised Road' is a fabulous song, and Johnston's 'Disney Girls' really defines the album best, with its truly elegaic and beautifully wistful look back to the long-gone glory days of the 50's. And then there's Brian's 'Til I Die' which is quite an incredible piece of emotional honesty, and the finally constructed 'Surf's Up' which despite being a patchwork of pieces recorded over 5 years, is a masterpiece of musical and lyrical invention. To really make clear who was in charge, the next Beach Boys album was called Carl & the Passions-So Tough (1972). Despite quite a savaging over the years, this is a really great record, and one that continues the much lower-key feel. As if to underscore the tricky emotional landscape both in the band and in the US, the production is sort of muddy, thick, and the songs seem to be weighed down, even when they're relatively upbeat. It's a fascinating contrast to the sound of the band just ten years before - all that bright optimism is almost entirely gone, and instead this world-weary songcraft has taken its place.
And then it's the peak of the band's post-Pet Sounds incarnation, Holland (1973). The troubled recording history of Holland is well documented and while the plan to reinvigorate a drug-addled and mentally broken Brian Wilson by recording in Europe singularly failed, what it managed instead was to push the other band members to write some of the dourest, yet most creatively inspired and beautiful music of their career. There is some remarkably odd but brilliant stuff here, from Dennis' awe-inspiring 'Steamboat' to Carl's anti-imperalist diatribe 'Trader' and although I stand alone in this view, I put Holland next to Pet Sounds as examples of the true greatness that pop music can achieve, despite their wildly differing natures. I do have to mention the fact that Brian's contributions are effectively 'Funky Pretty' which closes the album and is its one bad spot, and the priceless bonus 7" single that came with the album, 'Mount Vernon and Fairway: A Fairy Tale'. While Dennis and Carl were composing challenging, beautiful music, Brian was making funny noises and doing silly voices on a totally spooked out ten minute suite about a boy finding a transistor radio which has a magical "pied piper" inhabiting it. In some ways it's a sweet insight into the way a deeply troubled psyche seeks to retreat into a childish revision of its own experiences, but the sad truth is that it's so strange and so silly that it plays like a tragedy. Anyway, to focus on Mt Vernon is misleading because the actual album itself is truly wonderful, brutally bleak, strange, and really, really lovely. But Holland was also the end of the Beach Boys as a band to take remotely seriously. The band toured So Tough and Holland (without Brian, as usual) and a live double album, In Concert, was released late 1973. This is an unusually compelling live album and showcases some of the best songs from both albums as well as containing a number of songs from Pet Sounds and earlier, played in their more low-key 1970's style, and it proves just how good a live rock act they were by this point.
Following the brilliant success, artistically and commercially of the Holland tour, touring quickly became the band's bread and butter, and they rapidly turned into a parody of themselves and effectively became the biggest "oldies" live act in the world. Three years of increasing naffness and concurrent increasing success led Mike Love to think that they should get a record out to capitalise on their live success, despite having no decent new material and despite Brian being in as bad a mental state as ever. Inexplicably they insisted that Brian take the producer's chair and the whole band immediately fell out over the nature of the record they should make. Dennis and Carl, ever the more artistically minded, insisted they should focus on writing new material while Mike Love and Al Jardine, ever the more conservative (and corny) minded, insisted on recording covers of big hits from way back in the day. The result of the consequent compromise was 15 Big Ones (1976) an absolute car crash of a record, simultaneously listless, boring, weirdly-produced, dismally constructed, and completely fascinatingly awful. There isn't much to say about it except that it's as bad as you can probably imagine. The covers are terrible, it's even got them doing 'Chapel of Love' on it, which is utterly horrifying. The new Beach Boys own songs are considerably better, but even they're still totally awful (with the sole exception of album closer 'Just Once in My Life' which sounds like another missive from Brian's personal hell). Strangely, after the disaster of 15 Big Ones, Brian took total control of the band's material and made Love You (1977) almost single-handed. This one splits people into two very distinct camps. Everybody agrees that from 15 Big Ones onwards the band were little more than a joke, but one camp (including REM's Peter Buck) claims that Love You is Brian's last brilliant wild hurrah (the other camp of course saying it's just another terrible album from a now terrible band). Well, I'm firmly in the second camp I'm afraid. I can hear what's interesting about the album but I can't hear what's great about it. I suspect that because it's so clearly a Brian record rather than a Mike Love record, people want to believe that it's a great record. It's certainly miles and miles better than 15 Big Ones, but mainly because it's much more interesting rather than because it's genuinely great. I mean, "honkin' down the gosh-darned highway"? Come on. There's lots of funny trickery, weird backing vocal arrangements and all sorts of funny or bonkers little noises and jokes but it really isn't a very good record. There are, I'll admit, some great nuts lines ("Neptune is God of the sea, Pluto is too far to see") but again, the album is a fascinating curio, not a great work of art. And as a final word on it, it's truly heart-breaking to hear how just how badly the years of excess booze, fags and cocaine had utterly wrecked Brian's voice. And on that sad note, we must get off the Beach Boys rollercoaster. There are a number of other albums after Love You, but I will never own them - Mike Love may have been more than willing to tarnish the reputation of one of the greatest talents in pop music, but I don't want to ever hear it.
Finally for today we have the first two Beach House albums. Eponymous first album from 2006 is a fuzzily bleak bit of gloom pop. I know a lot of people who would disagree about that description but whatever it is that they're hearing, I'm not hearing. It's one of those records that you know you should like but just can't get near. People have compared the first Beach House album to Mazzy Star, but that seems very wide of the mark to me. This is far less engaging and far less enigmatic. If anything perhaps the problem is that it all seems so studied, so arch. It's a nice listen to be honest, but if you can remember anything about it once it's over then you're a better man than me Gunga Din. Second album Devotion (2008) has got a bit more going for it - there are some melodies here that actually stick and the whole exercise sounds less forced, but I still can't quite get to grips with what it is that I'm supposed to find so special about it. There are lots of hazy downbeat records with lazy female vocals around, I don't get why Beach House are supposed to be a particular unique example.
Laters!
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