What brought this thread back to life ten years later?! I could say a LOT about Pet Sounds, but why bother? If one doesn’t "get" the album, so be it. Having said that, I will in fact say a few words about it; I owe that much to Brian Wilson.
I can understand why a person would find Pet Sounds underwhelming; it sounds very "old fashioned", and isn’t at all Rock music. In addition, it’s recorded sound quality is mediocre at best; it’s so veiled as to make hearing "into" the music difficult. In spite of that, it remains Paul McCartney’s all-time favorite album. Go figure! Dave Alvin (The Blasters, solo, work with John Doe of X, new album with Jimmy Dale Gilmore) said a while back that he himself never understood why others he respected liked Brian Wilson and/or The Beach Boys so much. Until, that is, very recently, when all of a sudden he had the epiphany, finally hearing what others had for decades. Better late than never!
For anyone interested in understanding why "God Only Knows" is considered one of the three greatest Pop songs ever written (by someone "close" to me ;-), head over to You Tube and find the video wherein a music professor (well la de da) sits at a piano, breaking down the song, demonstrating and explain the brilliance of it’s composition. Not as dry and academic as that may sound. Thrilling, actually. I would provide a link to the video, but remain stubbornly computer illiterate.
Up above one listener characterized Pet Sounds as depressing; I think of it rather as melancholy. Another said it was influenced by Brian Wilson’s discovery and use of LSD. Only somewhat; the Smile recordings (the never-completed follow-up album to Pet Sounds), on the other hand, are dripping with the stuff. In the Smile album (a musical dramatization of Manifest Destiny), Brian had finally found a lyricist---the brilliant Van Dyke Parks---his equal.
