Pet Sounds

The topic of convo for this week is an album very different from my last post. It’s an album that’s a constant inspiration, reminding me that no matter how much music I make, every project can be as much of a triumph of personal expression as the last. Even though this album is the band’s 11th studio album, it nonetheless has stood the test of time as being one of the best albums of the 60s even amongst artists like The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, etc., and is still considered one of the best albums of all time.

The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds is the lead singer, Brian Wilson’s, personal masterpiece. He tried to make the greatest rock album of all time after being inspired by The Beatles’ “Rubber Soul”. Taking a year to write and record it. Wilson personally produced, composed, and arranged the majority of the album. This may sound trivial but it’s actually very unorthodox, especially for the time. Wilson included instrumentation that was never associated with rock albums before then. He used brass, strings, Electro-theremins, and many more sounds. He even used animal sounds (hence the name Pet sounds) and miscellaneous sounds like bicycles bells. A very experimental yet appealing album, Pet Sounds was Brian Wilson’s opus, and he was aware of it while he was making it

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Brian Wilson Mixing Pet Sounds

The reason I always go back to this album is that it is essentially one man’s vision manifested, that being Brian Wilson. Before any one individual was on the wave of writing producing and performing their music he did it and paved the way for many artists after him to do it. Whenever people think of this album they think of it almost as Biran Wilson’s solo project, and that’s certainly because of his headstrong involvement with the project.

I will note, however, that he did have a considerable amount of help with the lyrics on the album. 8 of the 13 songs on the album were co-written with Tony Asher. While writing the music for each song, including harmonies, instrumentation and lead vocals, Asher would work out lyrics through the melodies Wilson created. This would go on for only three weeks in total and the rest of the time was dedicated to recording the music at 6 different studios across Los Angelas. That may seem normal these days, but back in the 60s, this was unheard of since most artists recorded the entirety of their album in one studio.

You Still Believe In Me

I think this is as good a track as any to look at to capture what this album is really about. With only 4 track recording Wilson managed to throw in a bass, strings, his vocals, and harmonies, along with percussive and miscellaneous elements running throughout the song. He even has a car horn in it for God’s sake. And the most beautiful thing about it to me is that he heard at least what the sonics of the whole thing would be like before he recorded it. A true genius if you ask me.

Take the instrumentation aside, though, the lyricism from Asher on this song is very introspective even though it may seem on the surface to be just another love song.