Customer Reviews

Surf's Up [Vinyl]

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People get so caught up over this stuff about which albums Brian Wilson contributed to. I guess if someone is just a Brian Wilson fan that can be instructive for some, but nevertheless, this is in many ways a forgotten treasure.

It is often packaged together with Sunflower, which really makes me wonder what happened to the Beach Boys' market in the early 70's, because both albums were sensational and mostly overlooked.

If I were going to rank the top post-1965 albums by the Beach Boys, I would rank them thusly:

1. Pet Sounds
2. Surf's Up
3. Holland
4. Sunflower
5. Smiley Smile

Most people know Pet Sounds and Smiley Smile, but many do not know Holland or Surf's Up. The Beach Boy really achieved an interesting 1970's vibe with these two albums, which in some ways resemble work by the Eagles, Jethro Tull, and Jackson Brown.

How good is Surf's Up?

Well, Let It Be might not have been the Beatles' best record, but it has some pretty good moments and I would compare Surf's Up very favorably with that release. Feel Flows is an all time classic, as is the title track. There are a couple of out of the mode tunes on here but they generally work within the expermental framework of the integrated album. It was the early 1970's, with Pink Floyd putting barking dogs on their Meddle album from about the same time.

If you want to look at some of the other records coming out during this period, also, Surf's Up is a far better record than John Lennon's highly overrated Imagine, but not quite as good as Who's Next or Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones, but than again those two records might be among the top 10 rock releases of the seventies.

The album is almost worth the vinyl price for the artwork alone, which seems highly symbolic of the end of the Beach Boys' long arduous journey, which in my estimation was at its penultimate work that was really worthwhile.

While I can understand someone only downloading Feel Flows and the title track, I certainly can't recommend unless someone has heard the entire album first. Would you rip out your two favorite chapters in Catcher in the Rye, and toss the rest? This is an album from a period when artists still had things to say and were attempting to paint pictures and create moods. Sure, they wanted to sell singles, you have to make some money after all, but I am not sure that ultimately this album is all that different from Pet Sounds in that respect.

What songs should a person download from Pet Sounds: Wouldn't It Be Nice? and Sloop John B? Maybe God Only Knows, also, but that song is sort of jarring out of context.

Surf's Up is highly recommended.

I know sometime in my lifetime I liked the two minute harmonized girls-n-cars stuff that made the Beach Boys famous, but listening again recently I'm struck mostly by how superficial it all is. Soundtracks to Leave It To Beaver lives that never existed for most. All signs were that they were going to crank out Herman's Hermits hits until their falsettos cracked. And then, as if they had studied the Beatles progression beyond "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" they found a muse. I've read the comments dismissing all or part of this as "not good," and my reaction is that change is always difficult, and even forty years later those who identify the Beach Boys with "Help Me Rhonda" are going to find "Feel Flows" unsatisfying. No accounting for taste. But I think THE WHITE ALBUM is one of the best things the Beatles ever did, even allowing for a fair amount of clunkers, because they aimed high and connected more often than not. They took chances. The Beatles had taken chances before - their arrangements were as ground-breaking as their writing. But somehow WHITE ALBUM just seems more mature. More drugged out, some might say, and if that's how you feel I won't fight you. But if you agree that those two discs were transcendent I think you need to look (or listen) again to SURF'S UP. The two are not comparable musically, but I think they take a similar place in the artists' trophy cases.

For starters, what a brilliant title! How ironic that the album in which they contemplate the surf rather than ride it gets the tennybopper moniker. The title track will remain in my playlist long after "Fun! Fun! Fun" has been played (by me) no more. And speaking of surfing - here they warn that the water should not be taken for granted. They observe the unrest they had previously ignored. And for me there is no competition between "California Girls" and "Disney Girls" - the former is an immature wet dream, the latter the possibility that reflection might not be a bad thing, that reality with a forever wife and a kid some day might not be such a bad thing.

I may be overselling this. But I have spent 30 years in the music field in some way or another, know more music and music trivia than is considered healthy, and will say that SURF'S UP is one of my desert island discs. It's that good.

What a great album,I had this as a kid,lost it & just this past weekend on L.I. at a vintage records store (Infinity Records) I found it again & knew I had to have it, on Vinyl,YEA.....

Surf's Up is one of the better of The Beach Boys' '70s output, but it comes with it's fair share of clunkers. It starts off okay with "Don't Go Near The Water", but then blows you away with "Long Promised Road", written by Carl Wilson and manager Jack Rieley. From there it's downhill until you get to the next Wilson/Rieley song, "Feel Flows". More clunks until we reach the fanatic conclusion with the somber but brilliant "Til I Die" and the mythic "Surf's Up", arguably one of the best songs in the entire Beach Boys catalog. I recommend you download the four mentioned songs, the LP is for serious Beach Boys fanatics only.

Their best lp period.

best recording quaility in their entire catalogue.

and every song is good.
Pet Sounds had some weird instrumentals that were better placed on a Martin Denny Lp.

This lp is Beach Boys all the way...

the only outside the box performance is "Student demonstration Time" and it's a good thing because it shows the band can rock !! if anything it reminds me of 10cc