61. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (16/05/66)

1. Wouldn't It Be Nice*

2. You Still Believe in Me

3. That's Not Me

4. Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)

5. I'm Waiting for the Day

6. Let's Go Away for a While

7. Sloop John B*

8. God Only Knows*

9. I Know There's an Answer

10. Here Today

11. I Just Wasn't Made for These Times

12. Pet Sounds

13. Caroline, No

A+

So Pet Sounds is frequently cited as the greatest album of all time. Fair enough. I don't see the point of arguing, really. It's not my favourite album, but much as Citizen Kane might as well be considered the greatest film ever made, Pet Sounds is as worthy of being called the greatest album as any I can think of.

As to why that might be - I think a lot of the enduring popularity of this album comes from the fact that it sounds so out of step with the world. It sounded like little else when it was released, and even after almost 60 years of imitators it still sounds strange and unique and out of place. I've always thought of it as a sort of swansong for the sort of pop music that preceded it. In a lot of ways 1966 was an end to an era, and Pet Sounds feels like that era's definitive statement. At a time when rock was reinventing itself, with Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin on the horizon, here's a tender and strange work of orchestral pop that owes more to Burt Bacharach, Phil Spector, Martin Denny and classic Tin Pan Alley music than it does to anything rock & roll. The lyrics are strange, introspective and frequently pessimistic mediations on love, loss, growing older and growing apart. At a time when the hippies were declaring their cult of youth and warning people to never trust anyone over thirty, "Wouldn't It Be Nice" is a gorgeous paean to growing older and finally being able to enjoy life and find peace in the world. "God Only Knows" is not only a beautiful piece of music, but one of the few truly honest songs about love, about what it can mean to someone on a personal level and what it can mean for that love to end (it's famous coda is also one of the prettiest things ever recorded).

The suits might have been baffled by the absence of many obvious singles, but the rest of these songs are great too. "Sloop John B", a cover, might seem out of place lyrically, but its story of a disasterous ocean voyage fits the themes of the album perfectly (and I won't pretend I don't find myself singing "I wanna go home, let me go home" to myself a lot during rough days at work). The two instrumental tracks, "Let's Go Away for While" and "Pet Sounds", are both beautiful pieces of exotica - the first a gentle orchestral piece, the latter a sort of stoned-out surf number. The rest of the tracks cover themes ranging from the loneliness of striking out on your own the world, to the collapse of a relationship, the a tender moment shared wordlessly between lovers. The definitive statement of the album, probably, is "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times", which perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being out of step with the world, born either too early or too late to fit in. 

Above all, though, this is beautiful music. The strange instrumentation (including, among other things, a bicycle bell, a rubber horn, and a Theremin) never seems out of place. The complex arrangements are melded into a cohesive whole, with the complex and layered vocals creating a gorgeous wall of sound. There are moments of incredible beauty on thus album, perfectly complemented by brief forays into strange breakdowns or quieter instrumental passages that stop the album from being overwhelming in its sound. This is also a very well-sequenced album - all the tracks flow from one to another perfectly.

Well I'm probably gushing but this is an album worth gushing over. It's not quite perfect, but then again what is? And while it will never be my favourite album it's indisputably a masterpiece. It's a remarkable piece of work, managing to synthesise decades of popular music into a new form which is still inspiring bands today, and doing so in a beautiful, complex, occasionally challenging but always accessible way. A+.