The Beach Boys – Beach Boys’ Party! Review

An album which, at best, can be considered a contractual obligation, Beach Boys’ Party! is one of the strangest records put out by the group. This is from a band which would sift through nursery rhyme oddities on Holland just a decade later. A group which would nail Pet Sounds and yet its members would buckle to the lacklustre response on release. The Beach Boys are a mandatory listen, an exceptional group with more than a few perfect moments to their name. But part of the problem in deep diving their work in the modern-day is hearing pieces like Beach Boys’ Party!, a throwaway album at a time when their focus was on touring, creating Pet Sounds, and filing work which could compete with The Beatles’ rising star power across the pond. A cover of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ is the most interesting part of this unnecessary oddity. 

Recorded “live” is just a layman’s way of saying “acoustic covers within”. Beach Boys’ Party! is subconscious genius. What happens when a much-loved pop band tackles the songs of the time with a stripped-back instrumental? MTV Unplugged are rattled. The Beach Boys remain defiant in the face of changing times, during a period when artists were considering their public image, their album art, and the context of their songs. They were stringent in their party-loving, radio-friendly ways, but it became an essential, charming part of Beach Boys’ Party!. A cover of I Should Have Known Better eclipses all the fast cars, surfing thrills, and authority-loving songs preceding it. What remains a constant for the band is their magnificent vocal range. Pair that with an ear for kindling a soft-pop party atmosphere, and it is hard not to have fun at the equivalent of a church fair attended by Hank Marvin. The faux party chatter and the production smarts mean Beach Boys’ Party! sounds like a continuous jam.  

Struggle through the faux fun of the times, ignore the stresses behind the scenes and the focus Brian Wilson had elsewhere, and the party mood comes to life. It is not genuine, far from it, as heard on Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow, a grating example of what sinks The Beach Boys’ fun-loving, feel-good vibe. It is as faux as it gets. But within this covers album are reinventions of their own sound with I Get Around and Little Deuce Coupe. Those overhauls are sweet additions, as is the harmonica work on Mountain of Love. Everything between the songs, though, the telling off of those in attendance and the chatter over the songs, pulls away at what could have been exceptional cover versions. In replicating the spontaneity of live performance, The Beach Boys lose out on the chance to establish themselves as exceptional cover artists with a slate of charming originals to their name also.  

It is a mix which would have helped re-evaluate the group, especially when looking back on their pop-chasing days. Late-stage highlights like There’s No Other (Like My Baby) are sweet enough, though they do not cement the band as brilliantly as those preceding Beatles covers. A voice break on I Get Around is not just a gaffe, but a chance to hear some sincerity in a performance which has the summer-loving band prepare for the festive season once more. Bands were pushed to their very limit in the 1960s, and through the stress of this extra album on their plate, The Beach Boys both invented a performance style which would prove popular with everyone from Nirvana to Johnny Cash, but also failed to live up to the expectations set by the effort.