The Beach Boys – Surfin’ Safari Review

Consider where The Beach Boys are now and look back at where they started. Faux surfer rockers who looked more like bullies from Back to the Future than those who hit the waves. Surfin’ Safari is the first of many caricature-like offerings from The Beach Boys who, like The Beatles’ early years, were swept up in boy bands as a commodity. It happens now but with a subtler tone. Forty years removed from One Direction and JLS, we may look at those periods of appealing to young fans with the same disregard we should level at Surfin’ Safari. A sub half-hour album where the light-heartedness and liberated pop sound are The Beach Boys’ only focus. It does not take a detective to work out how quickly this runs dry. Monotone deliveries heard on the title track are at least backed by an optimistic tempo which the band would develop further. 

Frustratingly enough, the instrumental displays the band offers here are wonderful. Chuck Berry-like riffs on the title track provide a great glimpse at American pop in the early 1960s. Cringe-inducing bits like County Fair capture the spirit of the times, the carnival atmosphere and the strait-laced living of the early 1960s. The hippie boom was not quite ready to develop and the God-fearing plainness of the songs and image of The Beach Boys on Surfin’ Safari is a fascinating oddity. An awful start to their music career and certainly forgotten by most listeners, but it slots into that awkward spot between “important” and “insufferable”. Surfin’ Safari features some beautiful harmonies, even if the lyrics they back are a wash. Chug-a-Lug is the lowest moment of Surfin’ Safari. An advert for tinned beverages first, a song second. Nursery rhyme drivel saved by the suggestion of pop as a placeholder, not a pursuit, for the band.  

Though they wrote these surfing songs as a way of getting in with a popular crowd, The Beach Boys were never going to be defined by these early releases. They, like The Beatles, were trendsetters only after they broke from what elevated their image and status high enough to make a risky movement. A throbbing pain in the frontal lobe is difficult to avoid by the time Surfin’ plays. Repetitive, safe music for a period that, even at the time of the boom in surfing-adjacent music, must have felt like radio filler at best. The Beach Boys would improve on this massively with follow-up Surfin’ U.S.A. and yet still fall short of anything remarkable. It is of the times, stuck in the period, and even when lined up with the rest of the soft rock released then, it still feels underwhelming.  

Much of that comes from the idea of what a band should be, the smart hair and stuffy image affect the music too. If it were a heartfelt effort, had The Beach Boys actually surfed, these songs would feel less hollow. Instead, they are presented as grifters trying to shoulder their way into the charts on the back of a lifestyle they never engaged with. This sort of music-making would not pass now. Soft hopes on Heads You Win – Tails I Lose are found, more because of the uncomfortably catchy sound and the thrill of love as a gamble. Smart, brief moments like that are worth hearing once. Summertime Blues and Cuckoo Clock feel like immediately forgettable pop-slop offerings, and, given the period, this is inevitable. But it is no excuse for the dressing up of a group who had nothing to do with surfing. Listeners deserve better than to be flogged of their worth with silly jukebox offerings such as this.