The Beach Boys – Summer Days (And Summer Nights) Review

From surfing to motoring to boating, the many forms of transport The Beach Boys took on their way to Pet Sounds is remarkable. Unlike the music itself, which is of the radio-chasing pop variety. Hindsight is brutal to the Brian Wilson-featuring band, who would at least go on to write some of the group’s very best works. But now is not the time for that. Now is the time for Summer Days (And Summer Nights), an album which is not so much filler as it is floaty, lighter-than-light efforts from a group whose speciality was brushes with fun in the sun. Clamber aboard The Beach Boys’ boat and, hopefully, they’ll push you overboard to drown in the stiff pop rock of the times. They are clearly piecing together a better sound on Summer Days (And Summer Nights). Lighter than light material still, but there is a striking musicianship here, better than The Beach Boys Today!, even.  

What much of The Beach Boys’ pre-Pet Sounds discography lacks is sincerity. Extremely brief opener The Girl from New York City is the exact sound of the times, a neat adaptation of those summery frills and the relationships which blossom during the heatwaves, the hot climate proves a romantic stomping ground as it always did for these musicians. Where it feels almost impossible to connect with the Disneyland name drops of Amusement Parks U.S.A., the eerie cackle adds an accidental depth, a break from the sincerity and a look into the mania of the band. A sinister-sounding song, made by accident as during the 1960s theme parks were not associated with crusty old men or haunted spectacles. Another innocent part of the past ruined by the Mystery Machine and its inhabitants. The Beach Boys’ sound across this album can best be described as using the word “darn” in defiance of some societal ruling about not throwing rocks at dogs.  

Messing around at the park is seen as the great rebellion, a stuffy adaptation of what could be seen as fighting the power at the time. Drinking a Coke float without a bib, jaywalking, these are the acts of defiance The Beach Boys have on Summer Days (And Summer Nights). The weightlessness of the sound, the insincerity of a song like Then I Kissed Her, has the band sound more like stock options for the radio than anything creatively intense. But through accidental mishaps, the barbershop-like sound of the band is amplified and improved on. I’m Bugged at My Ol’ Man has the lead balloon feel, and yet featured on this unbalanced piece are great pieces like catchy Girl Don’t Tell Me, classic Help Me, Rhonda, and summertime defining California Girls. There is a sense of wanting to run wild and free, but a fear of consequence for doing so.  

Songs like You’re So Good to Me, while tame in their lyrical style, are monumental in the instrumental range they give The Beach Boys. Take those moments of studio reinvention to heart, it is the sound which would guide the band towards Pet Sounds. They do sound as though replicating The Beatles is their aim, and understandably so. The Fab Four were leagues ahead of The Beach Boys, and the sound found on Summer Days (And Summer Nights) is a solid attempt at catching up to the multimedia sensations The Beatles had become. Solid work which holds its own, a depth to their sound not found on preceding albums, that is what The Beach Boys manage throughout Summer Days (And Summer Nights).