When was the last time you listened to Pet Sounds?

Last time i heard it, the wife was playing it in the car on a road trip we were on. It woke me up from as decent a sleep as you can have in the passneger seat. "Shut this crap off!" was what I groggily exclaimed.

Man, that record is so TWEE and fucking ANNOYING, isn't it??

Out of curiosity, what do fans of this album think of songs like "I Get Around" or "Barbara Ann"?

(I've never heard an entire BB album FWIW.)

funny thing, last time i heard that album i was attending a tweefest in DC! but there was a blizzard so we went to vinyl ink. my friend and i were the only ones there besides the owner, and he put on pet sounds to warm us up.

Beats me, but it completely kills me in a way that O&O and Village Green (both of which I love) do not. O&O feels sorta sophisticated and baroque/dark, and Village Green has a intellectualism about it... but Pet Sounds is the sound of my unintellectualized emotional core. It's an incredibly personal record for me, which is weird, since it's probably the same for a lot of people. Mutual personalness!

O&O owns Pet Sounds. I mean, PWNS!!!

Did anyone find a good Smile reconstruction? I remember when the official record came out last year there were mentions of people taking the bootlegs and reconstructing it to fit the track listing and all that. I've been looking on slsk but to no avail...

Adam (post above), a good Smile reconstruction would be either be Brian Wilson's 2004 recording or Mok's construction.

O&O is great but can't compare. Geez, Village Green is not even close to the heights of PS! But, I got into PS before the "Greatest Album Of All Time" schtick was being carted around so I can see how that would put a chip on some people's shoulder...

Hurting (post above) knows what's up with both "I get around" and the "adolescent/growing up" theme of Pet Sounds. The 45 combo of "I get around" and "Don't worry baby" is pretty astounding when you think about it.

Pet Sounds--One guy's thought's about being in love and things not working out--and who happened to be pretty damn good at making music. It's kind of funny sometimes, it's got humor in it and a lot of neat sounds crop up on there. It's bittersweet-- incredibly unsure but at the same time supremely confident. The drive to experiment at the top of your game, but the need to communicate and not leave anyone behind. Well, what do I know? Only "That's not me" really struck a chord in this young man as he tried to make his way in the big city for the first time and Pet Sounds hasn't yet lost it's magic.

Oh yeah, really any LP with log cabin style lettering on it is bound to be a great thing!

My appreciation for Pet Sounds has definitely grown as my ears and orchestrational sensibilities have developed. Don't get me wrong, Pet Sounds is excellent from a strictly chords+melody standpoint, but where it really stands head and shoulders above everything else is in the arrangements. Listen to it on some good headphones and try to pick out what instruments are being used in a given song, what role each one is playing, how many vocal lines there are, etc. Sometimes I can still find a tiny detail here and there that I'd never noticed before. The vocal arrangements, too, have a complexity and quality of execution that is quite rare.

then they are. to you. to some extent, it's like asking "why is everyone so gaga about coffee? i just don't get it."

yeah, the arrangements are the thing. so much good stuff everywhere on the record. great melody lines, too.

The denouement came while my friend was playing "Pet Sounds" for me (it was the second or third time he'd try to show me how great it was). The roommate and the girl walk in, see me, then walk out. The dude comes back a few minutes later. He says all sorts of mean things, I do the same, and then he says "If I ever see you here again I'll fuckin' kill you," and so I punch him. My friend breaks it up pretty quickly.

Anyhow, "Don't Talk Put Your Head On My Shoulder" was playing while this was going down. I don't know if it's classical conditioning or what, but I haven't listened to "Pet Sounds" since.

It is my favorite.

that's great!!!
where's the drunken, bellowing Brian, tho??!

today

i almost started with smiley smile (my favourite) but nah

I have the sessions box set from 1997 on my iPod (which I still use and upgrade). Still one of my favorite listens, all you hear is a creative genius completely in control of his senses. As it unfolds, it's astonishing to hear him realize this rich and intricate music that he already knows in his head while a studio full of world-class session musicians follow his instructions like a seasoned crew who trusts the navigator to know what they don't.

Blasted it while driving around. The vocals only bit on "Sloop John B" never gets old.

Oh yeah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiq2fF3rNXM

Listened to it just now for the first time in a long while. What a an odd masterpiece - so assured yet obviously the work of a very young mind coming to grasp with some heady new experiences (drugs, fame, adulthood, all the glorious sonic possibilities...). The other Beach Boys seem almost peripheral at times to Brian's vision and then Carl comes in with that lead on "God Only Knows" and you realize how much they needed each other then to make this beautiful organism exist.

This morning!

Yeah yeah, greatest album ever and all that, but come on… TWO instrumentals?! And not even very interesting ones at that.

Of all the WTF takes in this thread, the “I listen to MIU Album more!” post has to be my favorite.

Both of the instrumentals are incredible and crucial to the flow of the album!!!

I find these annotated studio sessions fascinating, hearing the studio musicians taking instructions from Brian on playing these intricate songs that didn't exist yet. They illustrate everything I love about old-school analog recording and production, as imperfections and unintended happy accidents are left in the mix because they sound good.

“Let’s go away” is super interesting! the key shift and those vibes in the second half!

And we got season 2 trailer:

📹

For all the "Ana" lovers out there, here's an insightful music theory blog describing why the song's structure and half-step modulations are so genius:

https://musictheorybridges.wordpress.com/2015/10/20/the-pixiess-obsession-ana🕸/

I have the sessions box set from 1997 on my iPod (which I still use and upgrade). Still one of my favorite listens, all you hear is a creative genius completely in control of his senses. As it unfolds, it's astonishing to hear him realize this rich and intricate music that he already knows in his head while a studio full of world-class session musicians follow his instructions like a seasoned crew who trusts the navigator to know what they don't.

I couldn’t understand how he did this when I was that age and it’s even more amazing now as a 50yo !

Old ILX sure liked to use the word “twee” a lot.

Well it did develop out of a Belle & Sebastian message board.

Not really!

I mean there were quite a few Sinister people who joined but Tom and his friends weren't from there

I was going to say one day a history will be written but obviously what's needed is a documentary, filmmakers are running out of decent bands to make films about.

Ilx : the movie !

Both of the instrumentals are incredible and crucial to the flow of the album!!!

Agree with this. It's not unusual for me to hear people dismiss or devalue those two tracks simply for being instrumentals, but that says a lot about how much accepted conventions in pop music have changed. I was listening to a compilation of instrumentals today from the '50s and '60s, and it was all great stuff - not necessarily one-hit wonders either, at least a few artists had strong compilations in their own right, all instrumental music as well. It got me thinking about how there was nothing unusual or uncommercial about instrumentals back then simply because it didn't seem out of the ordinary - so much of the music the general public listened to, as in records they bought and put on for themselves rather than just background noise in a store or over the phone, was likely instrumental music. No surprise in an era when jazz records and especially classical music sold in far greater numbers - not just the ones involving singing but all of them. So even though vocal music was already growing in dominance by 1966, it probably didn't feel all that bold or uncommercial to make two album tracks instrumentals. It likely was a stark contrast to the '90s or even the '80s when a pop recording with no vocals was either considered an oddity, a novelty or for a record label unacceptable if it was chosen as a single.

it probably didn't feel all that bold or uncommercial to make two album tracks instrumentals

also most of their previous albums contained an instrumental or two.

Instrumentals are great. I recommend instrumentals

Poll idea: Beach Boys instrumentals

(ie proper instrumentals, not studio takes sans vocals)

(puts "stack-o-tracks" away...)

another poll idea — which pet sounds track works best as an instrumental? might go with "Don't Talk," because that song feels insanely heavy that way. (not that I'm saying it's *better* as an instrumental, just that it works as one)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWqhN1NLBs

y'all are m.ward fans and it's showing.

The Stack-O-Tracks version of "Darlin'" holds its own against most late '60s Soul instrumental hits.

Poll idea: Beach Boys instrumentals

« Let’s go away » surely ? Then « Summer means new love », I’d say. There aren’t that many

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9NLmSxSetU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxOP7zdPj3k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSDUu2B_X4k

I’d say. There aren’t that many

― AlXTC from Paris, Wednesday, July 9, 2025 12:32 AM (nine hours ago)

idk man maybe you should listen to more BBs?

still have my beach boys instrumental spotify playlist!

It's on you WwBF to make the poll!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW1buIwzW_M

I can't begin to count how many mixtapes and playlists I've started with Dianond Head. It's perfect

Surfin' USA has a ton of instrumentals which makes sense - they were still primarily a surf-rock band and the genre is dominated by instrumentals.

Had to look it up - 5 out of 12 are instrumentals.

you could say the instrumental was always instrumental to the beach boys

_I’d say. There aren’t that many

― AlXTC from Paris, Wednesday, July 9, 2025 12:32 AM (nine hours ago)_

idk man maybe you should listen to more BBs?

Eheh ok thanks ! I’ll check these instrumentals that are better than « let’s go away » !