The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (2005)

Jim Fusilli’s little 33-1/3 book raised the bar for me in terms of these authors liking, appreciating, respecting, and/or loving their albums under consideration. I assumed they all liked them but here is where I have felt it the most yet. Fusilli, who also writes detective fiction and used to be a house rock critic at the Wall Street Journal, is an unapologetic boomer. I am more of an apologetic one, but it may be the generational affinities that are reaching me here. My experience with the Beach Boys (and inevitably the Beatles) is different from Fusilli’s, certainly, but he’s only two years older than me and I always feel like I know where he’s coming from. He was raised in New Jersey, for example, and me in the Midwest, but I know very well his version of California as the perfect place. I was up on all the Beach Boys hits starting with “California Girls,” a little later than Fusilli. I had no sense of Pet Sounds really until the ’80s, aside from the many hits, and then I had mixed feelings about it. It took me a long time to come to really love it. It came to Fusilli a lot more quickly but he understands it basically the way I do, which meant some of his assessments felt so true they almost hurt. It reminded me all over again of the album’s uncanny strengths, now evocative even by title alone: “Sloop John B.,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Caroline No.” Fusilli does spend a good deal of time discussing technical aspects such as chord changes, which as usual are mostly lost on me, but in this case confirm my sense of how carefully constructed and rendered these songs are. The movie Love & Mercy, which came out nine years after publication of this book, is another good place to go for exciting portraits of Brian Wilson the studio original in action. Fusilli also talks about the hits and albums before and after Pet Sounds and has some interesting thoughts. He seems to have a good deal of loathing for “Barbara Ann,” a song I have come to like less and less myself over the years. But I must say I adored it when I was 12, even then understanding in the Beach Boys catalog it was one of those things not like the others. I suspect the taint of boomer may be on Fusilli for many readers. When he compares Mike Love to Eddie Haskell it feels as true as a poem, but perhaps too highly specific. So caveats. Also, Pet Sounds haters are unlikely to be convinced by Fusilli, technical points and all. That’s my hunch. For me, somehow—since approximately Love & Mercy—all encounters with the Beach Boys tend to make me insanely happy. This was just another one.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.