Considering their aversion to ocean-based music after their surfing days were put behind them, hearing The Beach Boys return to the great, watery open on Holland, is a welcome surprise. But within the deep unknown, as they make immediately clear on this 1973 yacht-rock-like release, is a trip through deep commotion. Opener Sail On, Sailor, brings this to a head, crashing the restful waters with the contemporary adjustments the band had made since Pet Sounds. They never quite hit a groove which suited them again but it remains thanks to Brian Wilson that The Beach Boys are looked on fondly. Efforts like Holland would be impossible without that severing of surfer cosplay. Wilson takes a backseat here but Blondie Chaplin highlights not a passing of the torch but an evolution to harmony stylings, and how these moments still had plenty of life left in them.
Chug along on these twisted waters, then, and allow Chaplin to cast his influence over the side. It works. Steamboat has the percussive depth that The Beach Boys would use infrequently but brilliantly in the works preceding this. Slowed tones on Steamboat bring a lucid sense to it and the well-layered instrumentals are dedicated to firming this feeling up, continuing on, softly so with the California Saga. Three tracks which are more an effort to expand The Beach Boys’ instrumental arrangements than anything else. Spoken-word experimentation on The Beaks of Eagles certainly works, but feels fragmented when paired with what precedes it. A tension arises, this sense of The Beach Boys trying to push further into an artistic niche they were initially fearful of but now realise is their only route to relevancy. It worked incredibly well on Surf’s Up but the magic has faded a tad on Holland.
Slim suggestions of the Wilson influence can be heard on California, that fun in the sun glimmer riding high on a bed of very dense but fascinating lyrical choices. From John Steinbeck to the purifying-like effect of water with some harmonica laid on top of it all, Holland is bursting at the seams after just five songs. The Trader may stand as the best Carl Wilson penned track of all, and its instrumental break with those synthesizers and the “yeah, yeah, yeah” interjections is incredible. Some of the last great works of The Beach Boys can be heard on Holland. Middle-of-the-road offerings like Only With You appear and offer little but some soft romanticism, and yet they have a glimmer of sweetness to them.
Throwaway material now included in later releases of Holland does not quite sink the album but adds very little. Offhand pieces like Better Get Back in Bed bring about a light and trivial tone mixed in with its spoken-word moments. It feels like narration to a relatively tame and uneventful children’s story. It is. Holland goes from one of the last grasps of brilliance from The Beach Boys to a numb and ridiculously poor children’s tale. Magic Transistor Radio and I’m the Pied Piper are to blame for this. Mount Vernon and Fairway adds nothing and though its fairytale is relatively well punctuated with additional musical spots, the overall effect is minimal. It swipes away from Holland but also highlights the mismatch of interests which would plague The Beach Boys from here on.
