The Beach Boys

Feel Flows

CAPITOL/UME Extensive box set covering 1970/71’s Sunflower/Surf’s Up era.

The main problem with

Sunflower and

Surf’s Up is that they’re not Pet Sounds and Smile. How could they be? With the former widely regarded as the best album ever made and the latter routinely lauded in hushed tones as the best album never made, they were tough acts to follow.

With ‘67-69’s Wild Honey, Friends, Stack O’ Tracks and

20/20, America’s increasingly outmoded ‘favourite band’ didn’t even seem to be bothering to try. And with resident songwriting/producing genius Brian Wilson having largely taken to his pyjamas in a significant hump on account of father/manager Murry

Wilson selling their Sea Of Tunes publishing company for a trifling $700,000 (would that we could all have enjoyed such a trifle in ‘69), the remaining Beach Boys were forced to step up to the plate and deliver. Which, to a large degree, they did. Dennis Wilson’s Forever (Sunflower) is simply stunning, while Bruce Johnston’s Disney Girls (Surf’s Up) is idealistic escapism incarnate. And while Brian wasn’t exactly prolific, those tunes that he did pull out of his back pocket were doozies (Surf’s Up’s Van Dyke Parks co-written title track, and the blissful Pacific narcosis of ‘Til I Die).

Weighing in at 133 tracks, Feel Flows’ bulk may be harder to validate than existing sets for the Pet Sounds/Smile era, but as a locked-down summer’s soundtrack its melifluous existential musings are hard to fault.

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