If you don’t already own one of the many editions of Pet Sounds or one of their numerous Greatest Hits collections, you might be interested in the latest, if slightly unnecessary, Beach Boys compilation The Warmth of the Sun. The disc, listed as being compiled and sequenced by the group (or what’s left of it – Dennis and Carl Wilson passed away in1983 and 1998, respectively) features a pretty much by the numbers overview of some of the sand and surf boys lesser known hits. You won’t find those summer radio mainstays like “Surfin USA” or the signature songs like “Good Vibrations” here but you’ll still get a good picture of how five young men evolved from singing about riding the waves and having “fun, fun, fun” into a group who has made some of the most lasting music of the past few decades.
The album starts out with some fun summer surfin’ songs. “Catch a Wave” isn’t exactly “Surfin’ Safari” but it will still make you want to Hang 10. When it comes to cruising, we are offered up ‘Little Honda” and one of the more popular car songs “409” which still sounds pretty “fine” after all these years. “Hawaii” is something of a lost classic and offers up all those beautiful harmonies that took the group to the top of the charts over and over again.
The melancholy days of the Beach Boys and any other mood they were singing their way through could always be tied to the often tortured creative process of the band’s leader Brian Wilson. “You’re So Good to Me” with it’s psychedelic flourishes pointed to the beginning of Wilson’s musical genius days even as the man, himself declined into a decade’s long drug-fueled haze that saw him becoming almost a recluse.
The Warmth of the Sun packs a punch at the end with a handful of songs that are just as good as the recognized Beach Boys hits but yet always fail to get the recognition they deserve. “Sail On, Sailor” is a bluesy rocker – not the kind of sound you usually hear coming from the band, but surprisingly good. “Surf’s Up” is a perfect example of the creative peaks Wilson could reach. This one plays like a small achingly-beautiful symphony – the kind that scares the pants off of record execs hoping for the next “Help Me, Rhonda”. Album concludes with the title track, “The Warmth of the Sun”. The song by Wilson and his cousin and fellow-Beach Boy Mike Love was written on the eve of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The tune, like the band, stands as an ode to a more innocent time that slowly sadly slipped away – but as the song says – we’ll always have the “warmth of the sun” to help us remember. |