Classics Revisited: The Beach Boys "Pet Sounds"

Pet Sounds is considered one of the best rock records of the pre-mp3 blog era. Some people might venture to say that Pet Sounds would still hold up and wouldn't be instantly forgotten even if it was released in close proximity to the new Best Coast record. After all, Brian Wilson is generally considered "an insane retard that gets high off of eating his own poop, but nevertheless, knows his way around a theremin and Ampex 8-Track" by most reputable critics. Some publications have even gone so far as to dub Pet Sounds the No Pocky for Kitty of the mid '60s. Some might even call Brian Wilson "The Godfather of the Burgeoning Chillwave/Beachslut Movement" mostly because he was all about using jpegs of cool looking (and possibly stoned) animals for the cover of his albums, and seemed to be all about hangin' out and not doin' shit...which I guess was as novel in 1966 as it is now.

In this review I will seek to find out how Pet Sounds holds up to today's cut-throat indie mp3 blog cycle standards. Is "Sloop John B" better than Neon Indian's "Shoulda Taken Acid With You"? Short answer, "No." Long answer, "No" with a "Maybe." Will the psychedelic sounds of Pet Sounds inevitably go the way of turdgaze, Christian dronewave, dark ska, and luxurycore and be dumped into the mass grave with the other dead rock genres? Or will the style transcend the art form with a "perfect sound forever" and be recognized as timeless; like space-country, crazy-cat-lady indie, Christian screamo, and "bands that sound more-or-less exactly like Jesus and Mary Chain"? I will also try to come to some conclusion on whether or not Brian Wilson was the original chill beach slut or the original hatin' ass beach narc. Which I feel is the crux of a lot of rock criticism. And I know there's an answer.

First of all, any of these songs would be hilarious if they were mashed up with Cam'ron or Project Pat or Uffie. I dunno if Girl Talk or the Hood Internet have done this already (I don't think so), but whoever does this will probably live on forever. On a semi-related note, don't you wonder why people play shit that aren't mashups at their party? It's fucking retarded. Sorry for the vitriol.

But yeah, Pet Sounds. What makes it tick? Why is it good or horrible? The most striking mp3 on this album is the stirring anti-death penalty song, "Wouldn't It Be Nice." I think if more people heard this song, violence and death would come to a screeching halt… maybe they'd sentence criminals to "hang out at the beach and smoke purple kush" instead of making them dig their own grave in the hot sun and shit. The second song is boring as hell and doesn't have any cool stuff happening in it. If you're illegally downloading the album, make sure you delete "You Still Believe in Me" and replace it with a better song that won't put you to sleep..."Get In The Ring" by Guns n Roses or "Another Body Murdered" by Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (from the Judgement Night soundtrack) are both fantastic substitutes that mesh well with the lyrical and musical themes found here on Pet Sounds. "I'm Waiting For The Day" has a heavy Green Album-era Weezer influence to it which is fine if you like that scene. I wonder if Brian Wilson listened to a lot of 2nd wave emo when he was being a recluse and getting high off of eating his own poop?

"Sloop John B" is sorta like the first chillwave song. And if rumors are to be believed, it took 48 different Apple laptops to make that song. I wonder if annoying girls that wore ironic animal shirts in the mid-60s would play this song way too much? "God Only Knows" is probably the most unnerving moment on them album, as it centers around uncomfortable themes of "loss of innocence" and feelings of "being raped by religion," it sorta throws you into a Comte de Lautreamont-esque surreal nightmare. This song is kinda the stylistic forefather to Marilyn Manson's sublime pocket symphony "Cryptorchid" as well as a lot of later-day Swans stuff. Fun fact! Some occult theorists/aura specialists say that you can actually hear Wilson's soul dissolving like a cube of sugar during some of the earlier recordings of "God Only Knows". But whatever. I've only listened to "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" once, and it's one of the better songs about using a primitive time travel device to go into the very recent past to cheat the stock market.

What else? The actual song "Pet Sounds" is an instrumental track. Whenever this song is preformed live, Wilson dedicates it to "all the pets around the world living and dead" and then makes the crowd join him in the chant "Hoof and horn, hoof and horn, all that dies shall be reborn. Corn and grain, corn and grain, all that falls shall rise again" It's kinda silly if you actually start to think about it. "Caroline No" is boring grandpa chillwave at its worst, which (ironically) isn't chill at all. And needless to say, I'm not in the mood to sing the praises about the rest of this dying proto glo-fi brachiosaurus.

Recently it seems there's been a groundswell of people I've ran into that think Smile Smiley or whatever is truly superior record. Mostly because of knee-jerk reasons...like people are sick of saying Pet Sounds is so un-fucking-precedented and - plus! - Smiley has songs about eating a shit ton of vegetables out of boredom and hangin' out with supremely fuckable bald babes! But this sentiment smacks of trying-too-hard music criticism and indie snobbery. Like when you ask someone what their favorite Wire record is, and they instantly reply to you "THE SHITTY ONE THAT NO ONE LIKES! NOT EVEN ME."

I appreciate Pet Sounds the way I appreciate George Washington, King Arthur, the Loch Ness Monster or Winston Churchill. In the way that I don't really appreciate it at all. It's like "I get it. You probably did a lot of cool shit 48 million eons ago when no one blogged about anything. I wouldn't be here without all your sweet beachwave parties you threw for the good of the nation or whatever. You probably met a lot of meaningful people and learned 'the ways of trees' from 'the red man' or whatever. I don't care. You're in my sun."

To the central question was Brian a cool dude or a narc? Well, anyone who hides from society and craps their pants all the time and uses tons of superfluous instruments just to be a jerk-off and waste the money of ancient buzz-kills that were probably pressuring him to pump out a hit on the level of "The Entertainer" or "Spoonman" or whatever song was #1 on iTunes at the time, well, anyone who does all of that rad shit will always be cool in my book. What was chill once will always remain chill, right? Unfortunately, no. Nothing chill ever stays. -Willwave

Classics Revisited: Nirvana "MTV Unplugged in N.Y."

Revisiting Nirvana's Unplugged in New York album is not like going back and listening to any ordinary old mp3 playlist on iTunes. It's like reviewing a super sad suicide note on iTunes. And this suicide note gets an F... mostly because of the deplorable and shameful way Mr. Cobain conducted his everyday life (he told MTV on multiple occasions that he "hated to feel" and that all grown-ups "should probably die"). This also sucks because the sound(s) to be found on this collection of mp3s are truly horrible and seem to be ripped at an inferior bit-rate.

But it is not without its discreet charm…

Cobain often used production technology to his advantage. Unplugged in New York is the perfect display of how to use the perfect microphone perfectly, for the motive of perfection. His face is neither too close to the microphone or too far away. What's ironic, however, (and I think you'll agree with me on this) is that that same face would be blown off, like, a month later by Courtney Love. Oh yeah, also, me and my girlfriend (who knows very little about music OR politics, sadly enough) agree that the production on this is really good.

On Nirvana's previous effort, Steve Albini made sure that all the negative songs stayed really negative and that most of the songs with sucky parts had at least one part that sounds like a cool Aerosmith song… yeah, this "good Aerosmith part" usually manifests itself at the end of the mp3 so you kinda have to suffer through the incredibly slow-witted and insulting ramblings of Kurt "Look At Me Ya'll" Cobain first. I usually text old friends from Purdue University during these shitty parts because I lost the remote to my iPod dock so I can't fast forward that fucking shit, plus I'm just sort of lethargic in general (I'm still kinda dealing with 9/11, for what it's worth).

I wonder if a lot of people got bored and started texting each other hilarious one-liners at the taping of Unplugged in New York. I wonder if any of the people that went to the show are still alive? I wonder if Nirvana bummed out the audience so much, everyone went straight home to their loved ones to tell them cryptic and grim stuff like, "Sorry dude. I just wasn't made for these times"??

On the flipside of that unsavory thought is the more positive prospect that maybe a cool bro with a Dinosaur Jr shirt met a cool babe with green hair and they did music but never made it big (because they don't give a fuck) but maybe their sound(s) influenced Kimya Dawson and the Juno soundtrack makers, so their sonic fingerprint kinda lives on (as sonic fingerprints are wont to do). Do you think everyone in the audience did drugs with Courtney Love on top of the Empire State Building after the show? Think Love ever felt "the presence of God" when she was high? Why or why not?

So what else is good? I think he covers a couple songs that are probably done by Wire or the Afghan Whigs or the Jayhawks or some shit. That's cool. Oh, and he does an old slavery song, presumably because this was recorded before Vice magazine and horrible Internet humor blogs made it "uncool" to have white guilt.

And those are the "soaring highs" of this vile and disreputable coiled loaf of audio turd. What else happened on this CD? Oh… I dunno. He does a song about how being happy is stupid and it's better to be a degenerate snob that dedicates 75% of his time in the spotlight championing worthless metal bands with diabetic lumberjacks like Tad ("Dumb"). He rips off the general idea of 'Sex Type Thing' by Stone Temple Pilots and makes it a complete snooze-fest ("Polly"). He makes fun of Tonya Harding and the Challenger explosion ("Pennyroyal Tea"). He does a pro-death penalty song ("Lake of Fire"). And he does a song that the worst, most creatively bankrupt and cliche people you could ever imagine would declare as "Kurt Cobain's final goodbye to a stupid world that don't mean shit" ("All Apologies"). That's about it. Bring a book!

There's a reason that groundbreaking and envelope-pushing chillwave artists like Neon Indian don't make retarded unplugged mp3 collections. In fact, if people stopped spazzing out about the burgeoning chillwave/beachslut movement and got back into grunge, I would be seriously bummed… I'd probably get a really short temper and treat my friends with the sort of smug disdain that can only come with the feeling that pop culture has betrayed you (somehow). And you should be similarly appalled, too. Hypothetically. -Willwave