This is probably the first album to set the tone of the late 60’s psychedelia. In an effort to top The Beatles Rubber Soul, Brian Wilson was driven to create the best rock ALBUM of all time. By this stage, the idea of an album was still just a collection of individual tracks, but the US arrangement of Rubber Soul grouped songs of a highly specific feel and arranged them nearly perfectly. The same and more can be said of Pet Sounds, with the main advances being in the quality of the production. The production is thick. There is a lot going on at any one time and nothing has a great deal of room to breathe, particularly on the mono mix. No matter how much Phil Spector strived to make ‘little symphonies for kids’, nothing he would ever do would come close to the success of Pet Sounds.
The songs themselves are alright. I’m not really a Beach Boys fan, but they all work very well in the context of this particular album. Favourite tracks are God Only Knows and I Know There’s an Answer, although I prefer the surrealist chorus of the earlier version, Hang on to Your Ego.
I probably prefer the mono to the stereo, if only because there are a lot of elements in the mono mix which are not in the stereo mix, but not much in the stereo mix that is missing from the mono.
Hang Onto Your Ego: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqlTOQFeII
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