Sail On Sailor 1972 - The Beach Boys (1972)

Ideated from: I keep a playlist of things that have been reissued, remastered, or given some kind of historical or archival release. I’ll tick some of those off this week.

The Beach Boys were kings of the 60s rock scene, but they quickly found themselves struggling with the age-old question: what now? Brian Wilson was still technically in the band but had pretty much disconnected from the world. The band hadn’t been very successfull since the turn of the decade, and needed to do something different.

What they ended up with were two radically non-Beach-Boys-sounding records, both recorded in 1972. The oddly titled “Carl and the Passions: So Tough” came out that year, and the follow-up, “Holland,” hit the following year.

This deluxe set explores both of those records and some of their outtakes and related recordings. We hear the Beach Boys–owners of one of the most unique sounds in rock music only years before–sounding like The Band, Creedence, Donovan, George Harrison, John Cale, and even David Bowie; but never really like the Beach Boys.

The problem isn’t so much that these records are bad–and the deluxe treatment underscores that–but it was just a weird time and the band responded by making some weird choices.

People might have thought this was a low point for the Beach Boys and in the early 70s it might have been, but …. oh, just wait and we’d see the low point.