Royal reissue of first Beach Boys solo release

As a drummer, harmony vocalist and occasional songwriter, Dennis Wilson wasn’t the obvious member of the Beach Boys to be first to market with a solo album. But with this 1977 release he stepped outside the shadow of his brother Brian and showed off surprising. These rock productions, thick with guitars, drums, keyboards and orchestration, combine his legacy as a part of Brian Wilson’s troupe, along with influences of West Coast collaborators like Gary Usher and visionaries like Curt Boettcher. Interestingly, by the time Wilson completed the album in 1976, the sounds upon which he was weaned were giving way to rootsier singer-songwriter introspection and more bombastic arena rock. Both of those flavors can also be heard here, the former in Wilson’s introspective lyrics, and the latter in the grandiosity of the productions.

There’s a sophistication to this solo effort that sets it apart from contemporaneous work by the Beach Boys, who in 1977 were still lyrically in thrall of Brian Wilson’s childlike wonder. By this point Dennis Wilson’s ragged voice was no match for his brothers’, but he made canny choices: what to sing, how to sing it and how to surround himself with instrumentation. As other reviewers have noted, Dennis Wilson’s rasp is an acquired taste, and can be wearying at album length, but there’s no denying the feeling in his vocals or his commitment to the lyrics. Emotionally and sonically this is an album both of its time and of the times in which Wilson grew up as an artist, and the palpable air of depletion is heart-wrenching in contrast to the lyrical optimism. The album can be a wearying spin beginning to end, but the individual tracks make for very great surprises in a mix.

Legacy’s deluxe reissue is one of the best they’ve ever put together in this series. In addition to superbly remastered versions of the album’s original dozen tracks, disc one is filled out with four previously unreleased items, and disc two contains sixteen tracks from Wilson’s unfinished second album, Bambu. Wilson’s voice was spent and at times tuneless as he recorded the follow-on tracks, making Bambu even more of an acquired taste than POB. Much of the bonus material has circulated on bootlegs, but this is its first official release in full master tape fidelity. The quad-fold cardboard slipcase includes a 40-page booklet stuffed with photos, an essay by Ben Edmonds, a Dennis Wilson artistic chronology, song and musician credits, and lyrics. Disc one also features a PDF that includes a 16-page essay by noted Beach Boys biographer David Leaf and a slightly extended version of the booklet’s chronology. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]