Features
Wednesday, June 11 2008
The Dawn That Grows Into Day: High Noons, Twilights, the Beach Boys, and Dennis Wilson
A pair of new Beach Boys releases -- a 16-disc box set of singles and the reissue of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue -- examines the group's resonance beyond the lauded Pet Sounds era.
Friday, November 2 2007
Sea of Heartbreak: Dennis Wilson's Majestic Solo Work
Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue, released 30 years ago, is majestic and haunting, a work as rich and complex as almost anything the Beach Boys released. So why is it out of print?
Wednesday, July 18 2007
Part 3: Curtis Mayfield to The English Beat (1970-1980)
"Just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine, go down .." Julie Andrews sang in Mary Poppins. Indeed, a bitter dose of angry words in need of saying, and set to a beat, quite effectively gets heard.
Friday, October 13 2006
The Beach Boys, Love You (1977)
Essentially a Brian Wilson solo effort, on which the ravaged, troubled genius takes a few more painful steps toward a purifying simplicity.
Reviews
Friday, December 16 2011
The Beach Boys: The SMiLE Sessions
For countless oft-told reasons -- creative, chemical, contractual and personal -- the album was shelved and officially unavailable. Newly available in 2011 as The SMiLE Sessions, this release is like a coda that took 44 years to arrive.
Monday, November 28 2011
The Beach Boys: The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album
This reissue of the Beach Boys’ legendary 1964 Christmas album gives the songs a remastered touch and allows listeners to hear the songs in pristine sound.
Tuesday, August 11 2009
The Beach Boys: Summer Love Songs
Don't break out the flip-flops quite yet: This fine and servicable Beach Boys compilation hits only a couple of highlights (along with some excellent album cuts), but isn't much in terms of a cohesive listening experience.
Thursday, May 24 2007
The Beach Boys: The Warmth of the Sun
Another 'Best Of..' from one of the most anthologised bands ever but at least this one looks beyond the 'hits'.
Blogs
Wednesday, November 9 2011
CONTEST: The Beach Boys - Starting a SMiLE Webisode + Giveaway
A chance to win SMiLE!
Thursday, September 29 2011
Musical Auteurism: Recognizing Genius
An album is not an insulated document, but rather something that breathes and grows within an artist's discography. I challenge music fans to not simply find songs or albums that they like (though certainly that has a completely worthwhile place), but to find entire discographies (from acknowledged classics to forgotten albums) to grow with over time.
Thursday, January 6 2011
My Top Ten Beach Boys Albums
The Beach Boys are my favorite band, and all following pop composers are compared to the incomparable standard of Brian Wilson, the true pop genius
Friday, October 15 2010
Dreamer: Dennis Wilson's 'Pacific Ocean Blue'
Stephen Rowland kicks off a series of retrospectives to showcase Beach Boys and Beach Boys-related material that is not very popular, rare, or has been forgotten completely.
Thursday, September 9 2010
Counterbalance No. 1: The Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds'
Presenting the debut of a new regular feature on Sound Affects: Counterbalance, where Jason Mendelsohn and Eric Klinger debate the merits of some of the most critically-acclaimed albums of all time.
News
Friday, November 4 2011
Brian Wilson’s lost ‘Smile’ album finally unearthed, with all the trimmings
CHICAGO — The Beach Boys’ “Smile” is the album that haunted Brian Wilson for four decades. The unfinished Beach Boys work devastated Wilson even though…
Thursday, November 3 2011
Influential ‘lost’ album ‘Smile’ is officially released 44 years late
LOS ANGELES — “The Velvet Underground’s first album only sold 10,000 copies,” Brian Eno’s famous quote posits, “but everyone who bought it formed a band.”…
