Released - March 1965
Genre - Pop
Producer - Brian Wilson
Selected Personnel - Al Jardine (Vocals/Guitar/Bass); Mike Love (Vocals); Brian Wilson (Vocals/Bass/Piano/Keyboards); Carl Wilson (Vocals/Guitar); Dennis Wilson (Vocals/Drums/Percussion); Hal Blaine (Drums/Percussion); Barney Kessel (Guitar); Jay Migliori (Saxophone); Leon Russell (Piano/Organ)
Standout Track - Kiss Me Baby
A little while ago I talked about Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You being occasionally problematic in its inability to ever elevate itself above the level of just being twee 1960s pop. If ever there was an artist that was able to elevate the essence of twee 1960s pop to something more, it's the Beach Boys. Somehow, this album, while never becoming vaultingly ambitious in its musical intentions, manages to distil ten times the emotion and heart and sheer fun into half an hour of music than Spector's fun but flawed festive record managed. Of course, the group's de facto leader Brian Wilson was an enormously vocal fan of Spector's (a huge number of the Beach Boys' favourite session musicians were veterans from Phil Spector's early 60s recordings), particularly the "Wall of Sound" approach. As I've mentioned before, I've never been a big fan of this recording technique, which Wilson apes here - it reduces individual performances, from guitars and pianos and drums to harmonicas and bells and strings to an indeterminate mess that's short on subtlety or true personality, and it's just as true here as it is with Spector.
But what Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys have over Spector is that, while their ability at capturing an instrumental performance is flawed, they really understand how to craft a song that's driven by the vocal part. Every single melody, vocal performance and above all, every lush harmony on offer here, is simply peerless. Not every single song on offer here is a solid classic, but the vast majority of them demonstrate a mastery over melody and harmony that few other 1960s artists ever managed to equal. Although few of the tracks on offer are familiar as Beach Boys classics ("Help Me, Ronda" would later become one of their biggest hits, but in a different version and respelled as "Help Me, Rhonda,") ...Today! demonstrated a deepening maturity and complexity in Brian Wilson's approach to recording and writing.
His songwriting talent is most evident on the album's second side, consisting of mature and emotional ballads in contrast to the more upbeat pop of the first side which, for the most part ("Do You Wanna Dance?" and "Help Me, Ronda" aside), is fairly forgettable stuff. But that second side delivers stunning tune after stunning tune, kicking off with the incredible triptych of "Please Let Me Wonder," "I'm So Young" and "Kiss Me Baby," each one surpassing the other, with the latter being one of the most emotionally affecting and moving pieces of music the group ever recorded. In fact, this record as a whole comes very close to matching the group's masterpiece Pet Sounds, which in fact contains more middling material than most fans have you admit. What causes ...Today! to lose out overall is its lack of a single out-and-out astounding track along the lines of "Wouldn't it be Nice?" or "God Only Knows." "Kiss Me Baby" comes close, but overall this is a sign of great things to come rather than being a career peak in its own right.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love except where noted.
1. Do You Wanna Dance? (Bobby Freeman)
2. Good To My Baby
3. Don't Hurt My Little Sister
4. When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)
5. Help Me, Ronda
6. Dance, Dance, Dance (Brian Wilson; Carl Wilson & Mike Love)
7. Please Let Me Wonder
8. I'm So Young
9. Kiss Me Baby
10. She Knows Me Too Well
11. In the Back of My Mind
12. Bull Session With Big Daddy (The Beach Boys)
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