The Beach Boys
We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years [Super Deluxe Edition]
CAPITOL
Following in the unfollowable footsteps of Brian Wilson’s teenage avant-symphony to God, 1966’s Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys went on an experimental journey filled with lo-fi stoner aestheticism (Smiley Smile), suspiciously slinky R&B (Wild Honey), waltzy bossa-nova pop (Friends), soft-shoe rock (Sunflower), socio-conscious soul (Surf’s Up), and elegiacally uncategorizable sounds (Carl and the Passions – “So Tough” and Holland)—each one mesmerizing, each with less physical interaction from Brian, yet more by way of his over-aweing shadow presence. The forever paragons of West Coast surf-to-shore Americana and barber-shop vocal harmonics were as lost at sea as their damaged band leader for the better part of a decade, malcontent at Brian’s sad, sandbox schizophrenics, yet perhaps pleased to be free from his weighty in-studio presence.
Until they weren’t. Which actually brought The Beach Boys, their management, their longtime label (Capitol, hot on the heels of the band’s three-times-platinum-selling greatest hits LP Endless Summer), and even Wilson’s then-controversial guru Eugene Landy to all mount a “Brian is back” campaign, when he clearly wasn’t. Which brings us to 1976’s 15 Big Ones, 1977’s The Beach Boys Love You, and its immediate follow-up, the never-released outsider epic Adult/Child—three albums and their outtakes that make up the core of this deluxe-edition package We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years. Taken as a whole, driven by the still-provocative synthpop of Love You and the moody-yet-humorous, Moog-heavy, big-band orchestrated Adult/Child, the box set is among the oddest, most fulfilling in Beach Boys box history.
Like recent multi-volume Beach Boys packages, We Gotta Groove again shows off how willingly experimental and collaborative Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and brothers Carl and Dennis Wilson were in the face of Brian’s genius. The other Boys may have bitched, famously, and sought credits oft-denied them (rightly or wrongly), but We Gotta Groove proves just how committed to the bit all of the Beach men were, in reality. For whatever reason and whatever manner this music occurred, the whole of Love You and the quirkily steroidal, brassy, and reedy arrangements behind Adult/Child (with tack piano from Daryl Dragon of Captain & Tennille) make for something magnetic. You can’t turn away from the Brother-era Beach Boys even if you want to—and you probably will want to throughout 15 Big Ones’s covers of Chuck Berry and Phil Spector songs.
Don’t write off 15 Big Ones completely, though. Brian Wilson–penned cuts such as “TM Song” (sung by Jardine), writing collabs such as “It’s O.K.” (featuring Brian singing with Dennis), and Brian’s lonely vocal on “That Same Song” are simultaneously charming and filled with hope, while maintaining a vibe of being distant and mournful. On a similar note, Brian once called Love You his favorite Beach Boys effort and his most rewardingly inventive work since Pet Sounds. In many ways, he’s correct: Tunes like “Johnny Carson” (sung with Carl), “Mona,” “Solar System,” and “Airplane” could only have been written by Brian, as they’re deeply observant—even journalistic—and stream-of-consciously naval-gazing, their melodies so unlike anything that The Beach Boys tried previously. The tracks and arrangements of Love You are as boldly innovative and singular-to-Brian as Stevie Wonder/Bob Margouleff’s synth sound was to Innervisions.
The same can be said of Adult/Child’s melodies, its quaintly curious autobiographical elements, and its offbeat take on Mooged-up big-band arranging. With the zig-zag complexity of Gil Evans mixed with Billy Ver Planck’s noir-ish orchestration for Lydia Lunch’s Queen of Siam, Brian leans into his most melancholic set list (it was originally intended as his solo debut) with “It’s Over Now” (sung with his ex-wife, Marilyn Wilson), “Everybody Wants to Live,” and the barely there “Lines.” That Brian never got over losing his wife is the largest part of what make “Games Two Can Play” and “Still I Dream of It” so effective, at once bravely confident and assured and ruinously heartbroken.
What works best throughout the whole of We Gotta Groove’s oddly opulent synthpop orchestrations—sketchy demos and all—is the sound of The Beach Boys in full joyous harmony, even if they weren’t so cheery. Led by Mike Love’s choicest voices since Pet Sounds, the Boys rose to the occasion of Brian Wilson’s rarest-ever compositions and arrangements. Had this aptly titled Adult/Child effort been released at the time it was intended (as 1978’s follow-up to Love You), it’s hard to say what might have come true for Brian. It’s not as if any of their albums sold through the roof in their original time frame, and it’s not as if Brian got the legacy valedictory throne he deserved until the canonization of Pet Sounds at the top of the 2000s. No matter: This box set is the sound of genius at work and at play through a cornucopia of weird harmony and singular storytelling.
