The Beach Boys – Friends Review

An easy, breezy album from The Beach Boys has a cover which now looks like a lucid nightmare. The Paul McCartney-shaped cloud to the left of the band, surrounded by similarly familiar weather-based faces, is a terrifying image. Horrible the image may be, the sub-half hour of fun to be found on The Beach Boys’ follow-up to Wild Honey is a delight. There is something so childish, yet likeable, about the cover. These are the friends of Brian Wilson and the band. Despite the niceness of the music, the more complete sound that the band presented on Pet Sounds is limited on the releases to follow. Nowhere is that clearer than on Friends, an album which shows just how hard the group were working to shut out the noise of disappointed fans. Return to the ways of surf, to the joys of motor vehicles. At least the friendship, which rarely featured in earnest in their early years of pop noise, is present.  

What the band lacks in a clear image, they make up for with tremendous instrumental experiments. Album opener Meant for You is a staggering piece, an underrated gem from Wilson. What could have been a straight-shooting love song with the backing vocal quartet pops is instead a delicate opener, a piece which sounds both unfinished and left to develop as a concept, the album could never successfully showcase. In its shortness comes a theme which lingers. Meant for You is the core of the album despite being the shortest song on the record. It is the message found in such few words which backs the title track, which features a sweet array of psychedelic-like optimism. Brass breaks, the repeated invitation to join the band and their cloud caricatures as friends of the family. It comes across as relatively sweet, and at the very least is an earnest and musically rich offering.  

An ineffective fade out for the forgettable song Wake the World does the opposite of its title, a sleepy little number which has the band follow in the footsteps of the crater-sized Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band hole. This is the influence of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, too, though to what extent is unknowable. The band were certainly moved by his presence and meditation, but little of his teachings can be found in the ever-simple lyrical style of the band following their experiment with interesting music on Pet Sounds. Disastrous tour choices and the fear of a sound they could have pioneered are what continues to hinder The Beach Boys, and you can hear that fight take place on Friends. There are instrumental sections which are inspired, paired with beach house-based antics, as is the case for Anna Lee, The Healer.  

Once more, we can hear The Beach Boys torn between the teachings of a meditative muse and the commercial desire of the band. Neither worked out for them at the time, but Friends remains a very listenable, very fun piece of work from the band. Its brevity remains surprising, and the shortness of the album means it cannot tire of its admittedly one-note message of meditation as a healing process. The issue for Friends is not in its frequent reference to transcendental meditation, but in the purpose of those mentions. Be Still feels more like a lazy command than a natural part of the album. There is a niceness to this album which remains after all these years. It is a placidity, a calmness, which can be felt when watching interviews with Wilson or listening back to Wild Honey. This sincerity and awakening are a part of the band, but The Beach Boys were never keen to explore it earnestly or often enough.