Beach Boys: Surf's Up

Beach Boys: Surf's Up

1971

Brother/Reprise Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Don't Go Near the Water  2. Long Promised Road  3. Take a Load Off Your Feet  4. Disney Girls (1957)  5. Student Demonstration Time  6. Feel Flows  7. Lookin' at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)  8. A Day in the Life of a Tree  9. 'Til I Die  10. Surf's Up

The Beach Boys tackle social awareness and ecology...With a mass of  singers and songwriters handling  such potentially-embarrassing subject matter (I mean...take a moment and check out those titles!)  its not entirely surprising that some of this works and some of this is outright awful...By my calculations (I'm sure yours will differ)  there are 3 good tracks and 2 bad ones on each album side, which results in this being 3/5ths good...

The Good: Opener "Don't Go Near the Water" is a pollution warning that's overshadowed by its happy hooks,  Carl Wilson pretty much bats a 1000 here, every moment featuring him is great. "Long Promised Road" has an incredibly uplifting chorus, "Feel Flows" is pure laid-back cool and his vocals on the  title track are really on another level...Actually the song "Surf's Up" almost totally destroys everything else on here...For chirssakes, it's the best track off "Smile," so in the context of a 70's Beach Boys album nothing else stands a chance...Only his similarly sorrowful "'Til I Die" comes close...

Bruce Johnston provides the awesome "Disney Girls (1957)" which is an interestingly complex take on simple nostalgia...Basically, the feeling I get is that he's moved on from all his other dreams and is settling down with a wife (who like church and bingo) but he still finds a retreat from reality in his fantasies about Disney Girls...

Cos Disney Girls are always sluts, right?

The bad:  Ohh boy...and some of this is bad..."Take a Load Off Your Feet" is a dumb love song to...well...feet!  "A Day in the Life of  a Tree" is just deeply unsettling. "Student Demonstration Time" and "Lookin' at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)"  are both as corny as their corny titles...Time to bring back that corn guy for this one...

The fact that Dennis Wilson's "4th of July" was left off this album is a tragedy! It's an awesomely mournful and moving track that nails the album's concept flawlessly. Take off "Student Demonstration Time" and put "4th of July" on here instead and I'm certain that the stature of this album would go up a few hundred notches...

As it stands...It's really kind of an alright album...It feels weird to say that about an album that features "Surf's Up" and "Til I Die" but then I'm forced to remember that "Surf's Up" has been restored to its rightful home on "Smile" and the Z-grade material really drags this down...Not a total loss, but not a total classic either...Do what I did...Find a used vinyl copy in the $1.99 bin...Because there's a few tracks here that are "must-hears."

Now let's check out "Long Promised Road" by the Beach Boys...Enjoy...