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Post by Charlie O. on Sept 25, 2020 9:38:51 GMT
I know a lot of people who will tell you it is their favorite album, period. It really means something to them on a very deep personal level. A surprising number of them will tell you that it's gotten them through some tough times.
I am one of those people.
People like that know better than to expect everyone to agree with them or respond as deeply to the album, but they - we - do bristle at the notion that it is "overrated".
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fange
god
Listening to long jazz tracks
Posts: 4,552
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Post by fange on Sept 25, 2020 10:00:11 GMT
As is your right, Charlie; we all have albums just like that.
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Post by DarknessFish on Sept 25, 2020 10:38:44 GMT
I know a lot of people who will tell you it is their favorite album, period. It really means something to them on a very deep personal level. A surprising number of them will tell you that it's gotten them through some tough times. I am one of those people. People like that know better than to expect everyone to agree with them or respond as deeply to the album, but they - we - do bristle at the notion that it is "overrated". Well, there's enough debate on music message boards about whether overrated is a useful term or not. But in some respect, why should you care what I think about your favourite albums, whether they're overrated, underrated, or wombling free? Surely it's what they mean to you that matters?
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Sept 25, 2020 12:22:35 GMT
*apologies if I’m repeating myself here but I’ve talked about PS a lot over the years and I find myself going over the same ground again and again. Regardless....*
To address G’s comment. Quaint? Well, yeah, it is in some pretty major ways. Sadly we live a world where this is a thing....
Pet Sounds, thankfully, comes from a very different time and place, both lyrically and musically. In terms of the former it comes from a pre-sexual revolution Eisenhower era where boys and girls go on dates and drink milkshakes and hold hands. At the end of a balmy summer night they kiss under the moonlight but it’s one of those kisses you see in old black and white movies and they follow it with one of those long teenage embraces where you think they are never going to let each other go. After another kiss, perhaps, and some cooing words of devotion they eventually part and walk home on adolescent clouds pregnant with hope, expectation and love. It’s probably around 9pm when they arrive home and their parents are both still up watching TV and they ask them how the date went. The girl giggles deliriously and runs up the stairs to her room, falls on the bed and sighs the kind of heavy, deep sigh only a teenager in love ever does. Etcetera. Please note: NO MASTURBATION OCCURS WHATSOEVER (very important).
Everything is life and death back then. Heightened, intense, punishing, ecstatic. Pet Sounds understands all this. Pop music is ultimately teenage music but how many albums have really captured all the agonising highs and confusing lows of that period and the bit that follows with such vivid beauty and heartbreaking verisimilitude. You can tell it was made by people who were in close proximity to those years. It feels agonisingly real.
Wouldn’t It Be Nice sets it all out from the beginning:
And after having spent the day together Hold each other close the whole night through?
We could be married (we could be married) And then we'd be happy (and then we'd be happy) Oh, wouldn't it be nice?
Son of a gun, I think that’s beautiful! Adolescent? Sure. Old fashioned? You betcha! But also universal and it captures a feeling we all understand. A mate broke up with his lass a few years back after a long time together and this was Their Song. *sniff*. Great art often has the quality of being personal and universal. When I was 17/18 and living this album it felt like my whole world, like Brian was talking to me directly. I was a weird, sensitive kid who struggled with that transition to adulthood and I think Brian was a weird, sensitive kid who struggled too. Christ, something like That’s Not Me really brings me back to that period when I left home for university and really didn’t know What the fuck I was doing to such a degree its completely transportive. Like I can actually smell the stale odour of the halls of residence you know? There’s such a vulnerability there it’s almost like reading back the pages of a diary or summat. Even now it’s a little bit too close to the bone, you know? There are countless moments like that on the album. Consequently Pet Sounds spoke to me like no other record and provided great comfort and succour but you have to kinda “get” it at a certain age for its full power to become apparent I reckon. The album is about growing up and the struggles that accompany that and the profound loss of innocence that occurs too but if you listen to it whilst all this is happening it takes on a whole other level of meaning and significance. And yet it would be foolish to write it off as purely adolescent lyrically when it captures something far more universal and profound and beautiful to me and on different levels too. Take You Still Believe In Me for example....
I try hard to be strong but sometimes I fail myself, And after all I've promised you so faithfully, You still believe in me! I want to cry.
"I want to cry". What a beautiful sentiment! After everything I’ve done, after all those moments where I gave you cause to doubt me...you still believe in me. I’m a grown man ffs and that still brings a tear to my eye. See also God Only Knows or I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times. The former is a hymn of devotion so pure and sweet you can’t help but bow down before its celestial glow and of course the latter never ages lyrically. We all have those moments where we feel out of time, alone and isolated and sometimes they actually increase as you get older not diminish. What about fucking Caroline No? That’s not just a song about a girl who loses that happy glow, I think on some level it’s about the loss of all our happy glows. That fade! Jesus Christ, that’s your childhood fading away never to return folks, leaving you standing alone on the platform, steam and tears in your eyes whilst the train zooms away into the distance. There’s such a sadness there, such a poignancy. It break my heart.
And that’s the thing with Pet Sounds. It may be, ultimately, about a loss of personal innocence but due to its “quaintness” it captures something even more powerful and profound....a loss of cultural innocence too. From the 60s to the, whatever the fuck we call this decade now. From the Beach Boys and You Can’t Hurry Love and She Loves You to fucking Cardi B and Love Island and Donald Trump. That was not by design of course – how could it be? - but nevertheless it’s there and I feel it.
And I’ve not even really talked about the music. Again, let’s go back to the beginning. A weird guitar that sounds like something from a 19th century carnival, a massive drum thump by the mighty Hal Blaine and off we go. Saxophones, accordions, stacked harmonies, various other instruments that I can’t be arsed listing....you can recognise some of this stuff but the pianos sound different (so much of PS sounds just that little bit different to what you’d expect). It gives PS an ethereal element, a celestial quality that moves me profoundly. There's a holy glow to PS. Like it's got a halo hovering above it. Brian talked about this when he made the record.
Just the sound world of the record is astonishing to me. Old fashioned? Well, it’s old fashioned in the sense that nobody does this kinda shit anymore – cos they can’t – but pop music has never been more sophisticated nor embraced the world of classical music so sublimely. Those Brian Wilson chords, those goddamn arrangements, the FUCKING VOCALS, the beauty of those melodies and the wonderful instrumental touches that PS overflows with (bicycle bells!). It’s heady stuff and you can get lost in its mono world completely in ways that you can’t with so much other music. Brian was really tripping on his own creativity at this point. What’s that instrument at 1.45? What’s Brian done with that piano? He’s plucking the strings from the inside with a fucking pen or summat? Eh? SOUNDS FUCKING AWESOME BRIAN.
Listen....
The flutes! The fucking flutes! The campaign to bring flutes back into pop music starts right now! The moment at 0.52 when the drums kick in – huge, magnificent – followed by “I kissed your lips” and those surging harmonies is as thrilling as Led Zeppelin to me. The instrumental break around 1.39....the vocals (doh..doh..doh, the sighing "ahhhs"...just blissful) and then you have that little string part at 2.20 before the drums kick in again before the passionate fade (“you didn’t think!...).
This...
The section from 1 minute on. Glockenspiel, woodblock(?), strings, that gorgeous Pet Sounds guitar sound...one of the most intimate moments in pop. And then the gentle orchestral build and the stunning fade: drums, timpani, a guitar that sounds vaguely Indian and that exquisite counterpoint melody in the background (listen closely around 2mins onwards). It’s just beautiful, beautiful music and one of those rare times where you feel pop music actually stands up to classical you know?
This...
The fucking instrumental break! Is that a kazoo crossed with a sax? No it’s a bass harmonica! And there’s a banjo! Brian you’re killing me here! And isn’t that chorus beautiful and soaring? That piano hook just will not fucking quit. Man that fade is wonderful. Shame they didn’t have 12” versions back then.
I could go on but you get the point. It’s maybe the richest album in rock musically speaking. There is a careers worth of music in those mono grooves and when you listen to Pet Sounds you are listening to Brian Wilson’s fucking heartbeat. Listen...listen...listen. Overrated? Fuck off. Joy Division? Please. Let’s keep it real here.
Yeah Pet Sounds is a record of its time (hell, lyrically it might have been old even when it came out) but like all truly great art it transcends origins and speaks to people across time and space and I hope it always will. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where this isn’t recognised as one of the true peaks of popular music. Quaint then? Yeah but Pet Sounds still burns as brightly as any album ever made.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2020 12:25:54 GMT
round of applause
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fange
god
Listening to long jazz tracks
Posts: 4,552
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Post by fange on Sept 25, 2020 12:32:33 GMT
I'm always glad to read your unreserved love and sheer enthusiasm for this record, GB. It almost makes me feel sad that these songs don't quite connect with me in the same way.
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Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Sept 25, 2020 12:44:34 GMT
I think it has to hit you at the right time - the right age. D's right about that. And yes, it's incredibly rich musically. But it's all so organic, you never get a sense that Brian thought 'ah we'll add a couple of exotic instruments in there to give it a bit of flavour' - more like 'get me a kazoo! we need a kazoo for the final coda!'
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Post by Half Machine Lipschitz on Sept 25, 2020 13:01:56 GMT
I don't think I've ever listened to the whole thing. I find I can rarely muster enthusiasm for things that are meant to be the "best" in their category. Who wants the best all the time? It makes me think of Hard Rock Cafés and bankers and insufferable assholes (not you guys). I feel the same way about the Beatles in a way, but I at least grew up with them and have an attachment.
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Post by tory on Sept 25, 2020 13:26:27 GMT
In comparison to Revolver, I've always thought that Pet Sounds just sounded more mature, more adult and just more elevated. When I heard it for the first time, it felt that there was a new universe of pop music that Wilson had created, one that just seemed more contoured in terms of emotional peaks and troughs.
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Post by daveythefatboy on Sept 25, 2020 15:09:16 GMT
I think it has to hit you at the right time - the right age. D's right about that. And yes, it's incredibly rich musically. But it's all so organic, you never get a sense that Brian thought 'ah we'll add a couple of exotic instruments in there to give it a bit of flavour' - more like 'get me a kazoo! we need a kazoo for the final coda!' I don’t actually think it is true that you have to come to it at “the right age.” I’m not sure I did (I can’t even recall anymore). I don’t think that you have to be in proximity to the youth Brian evokes. I simply think you have to either feel its loss, or the threat of it slipping away. I’m 55, and I’m pretty sure I would “get” this album if it were introduced to me today...because I still remember. Like all albums, I think the key is finding it in the right frame of mind.
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Post by Sneelock on Sept 25, 2020 17:27:22 GMT
Precious little is ever rated the exact proper amount. you must choose underrated or overrated. I choose overrated. I heard Elton John talking it up once on Casey Kasim's American Top 40 show on the radio. I had it in my stack - I got a bunch of Beach Boys records when Capitol was cutting them out for some reason. I wasn't a real big Elton fan at the time but I liked what he said about it and I remembered really liking "God Only Knows" &"Caroline, No" I spun it a couple times. flash forward: I've spun it lots of times. overrated. yay. I'm cool with that.
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Post by Charlie O. on Sept 25, 2020 17:57:55 GMT
I know a lot of people who will tell you it is their favorite album, period. It really means something to them on a very deep personal level. A surprising number of them will tell you that it's gotten them through some tough times. I am one of those people. People like that know better than to expect everyone to agree with them or respond as deeply to the album, but they - we - do bristle at the notion that it is "overrated". Well, there's enough debate on music message boards about whether overrated is a useful term or not. But in some respect, why should you care what I think about your favourite albums, whether they're overrated, underrated, or wombling free? Surely it's what they mean to you that matters? For me, ultimately - sure. Like I said, I don't care overmuch if other people don't "get it" (another loaded phrase, I know - I'll come back to it momentarily) - though at some level I do feel sorry for them (I'm sure we all have lots of records like that). But tell someone for whom Pet Sounds has been literally a lifeline at one or many points in their life that it's overrated, and to them you're more or less saying that they themselves are "overrated" - even when they know that's not your intent. Never mind that. Let's go back to "not getting" something. Why do we find it so hard to admit that we "just don't get it"? There's lots of things I "just don't get" - there are for all of us. Why do we always feel the need to fall back on "there's nothing there" or "it's overrated" or some variation thereof - especially for an album that has obviously meant a lot to a lot of people for decades, whether it's Pet Sounds or Kind Of Blue or Unknown Pleasures or whatever? What is it that always seems to drive us to say "those people have been deluding themselves all this time, and I know The Truth"?
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Post by Charlie O. on Sept 25, 2020 18:07:56 GMT
I love Goat Boy's whole post, but the musical analysis... this is one of those albums where the more you dig in, the more you find; where listening to isolated instrumental or vocal parts or even rehearsals detracts from the magic of the finished product not one jot. "Genius" is an even more overused word than "overrated", but if there are such things in music, Brian Wilson was one.
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Post by Sneelock on Sept 25, 2020 18:13:02 GMT
For all his famous indecisiveness, I think what we have here is Brian “in the zone” You can hear his confidence in “the sessions” i’m Glad he stayed home and made a record.
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Post by daveythefatboy on Sept 25, 2020 18:54:29 GMT
Never mind that. Let's go back to "not getting" something. Why do we find it so hard to admit that we "just don't get it"? There's lots of things I "just don't get" - there are for all of us. Why do we always feel the need to fall back on "there's nothing there" or "it's overrated" or some variation thereof - especially for an album that has obviously meant a lot to a lot of people for decades, whether it's Pet Sounds or Kind Of Blue or Unknown Pleasures or whatever? What is it that always seems to drive us to say "those people have been deluding themselves all this time, and I know The Truth"? I think that “open-mindedness” has been fetishized in a strange way amongst music fans of our vintage. There’s this false dichotomy between the intrepid musical adventurer whose tastes cross all barriers of age/time/genre/country/ethnicity/thought vs. the stuck-in-the-mud/past/safe-little-world. It is an extremely dumb and self-serving conceit. But I suppose it makes the act of collecting and listening to sound files seem bigger than that. In truth, there’s just music that works for you and music that doesn’t. We put it on lists and try to validate our experience of it, but ultimately who cares? When I first hooked into the power of music, it pushed certain buttons for me. I was a lonely kid, and these voices brought the warmth and companionship that I needed to survive. So I’m always going to value music most on whether bit provides that. It is how I’m wired. The thought that that lonely kid also signed up for every other thing music does when he deigned to start caring about it doesn’t actually have to follow. It can follow. I’ve found a few new thrills along the way. But it isn’t compulsory, and I’m not worried about seeking like the bad music fan in the false-dichotomy archetype for not putting on the musical pith helmet. Some music... a LOT of music... isn’t for me. That isn’t a problem. But it does seem like people have a LOT harder time admitting to “not getting” something than they do criticizing The Beatles or Pet Sounds.
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