With some artists, the accepted wisdom is simply unacceptable – a lazy shorthand used to excuse a closed mind. Consider the Beach Boys, for instance. The generally accepted wisdom about the Beach Boys is that they made one fantastic album, and started to make another one but never finished it. The accepted wisdom tells us that that one fantastic album was an apparent aberration in their discography, without precedent before it’s release, and without match after. The accepted wisdom tells us that before this fantastic album, the Beach Boys’ music was wholly inconsequential, generally silly, and mostly about cars and girls and fun in the sun; and that after this fantastic album, they were little more than a pathetic oldies circuit fixture, making a career of nothing more than shameless recyclings and repackagings of that inconsequential fun-in-the-sun silliness.

The accepted wisdom on the Beach Boys is unacceptable.

But now that the legendarily unfinished Smile has finally been released to near-universal acclaim – now that it’s once again fashionable to sing Brian Wilson’s praises, it might be a nice time to also re-think the accepted wisdom.

The truth about the Beach Boys is actually much more complicated. Unlike the general narrative arc that follows any legendary group – the humble or blatantly commercial beginnings, the daring declaration of independence and relevance, the “classic years”, and then the break-up, the tragic death, or, perhaps worst of all, the long, slow march to the County Fair stage – the Beach Boys’ story is full of great leaps forward and backward, bold advances and embarrassing retreats, not to mention a good measure of all the great rock n roll cliches: addiction, excess, and in-fighting.

And even if it’s true their pivotal 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds was an isolated achievement, the bigger picture truth is that it was only one of several isolated masterpieces scattered throughout one of the most expansive, messy, interesting, and yes, thrillingly uneven discographies in rock history.

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The truth is that there was indeed a precedent for the collection of startlingly delicate orchestral ballads that made up Pet Sounds. If the lush harmonies of early hits like “Surfer Girl”, the grand arrangement of “Don’t Worry Baby”, or the gorgeous introspection of “In My Room”, hadn’t already clued us in, the second side of the band’s first 1965 album Today!, a suite of five intimate love songs, offers irrefutable evidence that Pet Sounds was no fluke.

At the risk of heresy, I’m going to declare that Today! is, in fact, the best Beach Boys album ever. But if that’s stretching the acceptable wisdom too far, then maybe we can say that Today! is the most Beach Boys-y Beach Boys album ever – a perfect representation of the fun-in-the-sun, endless harmony of their early sound as well as a just-as-perfect representation of Pets Sounds-style balladry, not to mention an equally perfect representation of Brian Wilson at the height of his powers as songwriter, producer, and arranger.

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Imagine yourself as a teenager, but not yourself as a teenager, but rather as a sort-of in-the-movies teenager, the kind of teenager with pin-up posters hung at distinctly un-random “random” angles all over his bedroom wall, the kind of teenager who walks in the classroom cool and slow, and calls the English teacher “Daddy-O”. Now imagine yourself as that teenager at a typical teenage slumber party, but not a real slumber party, but an in-the-movies slumber party, where teenage girls sing brush-a-brush-a-brush-a, pierce each other’s ears with safety pins, and raid their mothers’ wigs.

At first, you’re all having a great time. Mom’s brought in some sandwiches and cookies, and one of your friends – the one most likely to break every taboo and get away with it - brings out the bottle of cheap wine she smuggled out of her Dad’s liquor cabinet. You’re all dancing around, and listening to records, and laughing and having pillow fights.

Then, at some point, exhausted from the pillow fighting, head pounding from all the noise and activity, maybe a little woozy from the wine, things start to quiet down. Maybe, having noticed the treasured Frankie Avalon clock (the one you made yourself using magazine cut-out pictures) reading 1:30 am (or maybe at the not-too-subtle urging of the resident parents – because surely, no teenage slumber party would go completely unchaperoned), the lights get turned out, and you’re all laying around in sleeping bags – not quite awake, but not really sleepy yet either. And maybe, it’s just the fact that the lights are out; or maybe it's the weird, and not-just-a-little-bit-awkward intimacy of being in such close proximity with so many like-minded hormones, but the conversation turns towards deep things – like the meaning of life, the gruesome death of some distant relative, and, of course, boys. (Or girls. Depending on the slumber party you’ve imagined.)

Today! is like that slumber party: on the one side, a half dozen harmless, squeaky-clean, and oh-so-wonderful rock n’ rollers; and on the other, the teenagers-in-sleeping-bags-on-the-floor-in-the-dark-in-the-middle-of-the-night confessionals. And it’s a non-stop joy to listen to.

On both sides of the record, Wilson draws as much inspiration from Phil Spector's big-is-beautiful Wall of Sound approach and classic doo-wop and R&B, as he does from the soaring falsettos and echoed guitars of the surf music that made the band famous. And so what if hits like "Help Me, Rhonda" or "Dance, Dance, Dance" - not to mention the joyous, album-opening cover of Bobby Freeman's "Do You Wanna Dance", sung by little brother (and resident heartthrob) Dennis - ultimately feel a little lightweight. Resistance against hooks like that is futile.

But even on the rocking side, Wilson manages an unexpected tenderness, playing the protective big brother on "Don't Hurt My Little Sister" (complete with a musical allusion to Spector's "Then He Kissed Me", which the Beach Boys would cover on their next album), or pondering his impending adulthood on "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" with all the wide-eyed naivete of an anxious fourth-grader.

But it's the second side where Wilson's star starts to shine just a little bit brighter than the rest of the band's. "Please Let Me Wonder", "She Knows Me Too Well", and the beautifully textured "Kiss Me Baby" - all three released as singles, though only "Please" managed to chart - are all among Wilson's greatest compositions (and still find their way into his live shows forty years later, despite their relative obscurity); and a cover of doo-wop group the Students' "I'm So Young" is a classic, tragicomic story of puppy love ("So yo-o-oung... can't mar-ry no-o one," he cries), rendered with glorious teenage drama, but also, and more importantly, with a deep affection, as if Brian was singing this love song to the song itself. (And he very well may have been.)

It was right before the recording of Today! that Brian had announced to the band that he would no longer be performing with them on tour, so that he could devote more time to his craft as a songwriter and in the studio. It was a decision that would ultimately impact the band (and Brian himself) for extremes of better and worse. Like Pet Sounds, Today! was a quantum leap for the band artistically - and yielding a solid handful of charting singles, it didn't hurt their standing at the record company either.

One might have been forgiven for thinking that, after something as wondrous and awe-inspiring as "Kiss Me Baby", there was no turning back.

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But one would be wrong. Almost as quickly as those slumber party teenagers would struggle to retract their late-night confessions the next day at school, the Beach Boys, barely four months after the release of Today!, released a monumental about-face in the form of Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), essentially a concept album (though 'song cycle' might be pushing it) about - well, everything that old-time Beach Boys songs were supposed to be about.

Still, as disposable and derivative as songs like "Amusement Park USA", the lazy instrumental "Summer Means New Love", or their tribute to "Salt Lake City" ("it's got the grooviest kids") feel, the album still finds the Boys flexing their sound - albeit in ways less challenging to their 45-buying fan base.

Opening track "The Girl From New York City" is a clever re-write of/reply to the Ad-Libs' similarly titled hit of that Spring. Both "You're So Good To Me" - complete with falsetto la-la-la-la choruses - and the fabulous "Girl Don't Tell Me", with its folksy acoustic strumming, soulful melody and petulant delivery (by Carl Wilson - arguably the group's best singer), is clearly modeled after the sound of British Invasion bands like Manfred Mann (and of course, the Beatles).

As much as Summer Days seems to want us to forget Today! ever happened, Wilson's genius is apparent in the lovely a capella lullaby "And Your Dreams Come True" (updating both Dorothy Gale and Jiminy Cricket in one fell swoop); and the album boasts two of the band's most ambitious singles to date: "Let Him Run Wild", whose combination of upbeat pop melody and bold orchestrations foreshadowed the sprightlier moments of Pet Sounds; and the album's centerpiece, "California Girls".

We've probably lived with "California Girls" so long that it's too easy to forget how downright amazing, how fricking revolutionary, really, the song is in its structure. Sure, it may just be another song about girls, but man, it's a song about girls with a thirty second (a veritable eternity in 1965 radio programmer time) symphonic introduction, and the kind of show-stopping grandeur reserved only for big MGM musical production numbers. Not just one of the band's biggest hits, but one of their two or three greatest 45 rpm acheivements.

Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) might seem like something of a regression after the surprising intimacy of Today!, and it certainly isn't nearly as 'important' an album as its predecessor; but nevertheless it's a solid and thoroughly enjoyable slab of innocent summer fun.

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In 2001, as part of their exhaustive Beach Boys reissue campaign, Capitol Records packaged these two albums together on one CD with 24-bit remastered sound, extensive liner notes featuring track-by-track commentary, single release and chart info, and production notes, along with five bonus tracks, including the non-LP single "The Little Girl I Once Knew" (a top 20 hit released in November 1965), and several alternate takes.

This wonderful two-fer contains enough of the band's early pop sound as well as hints of later glories that it makes a great jumping off point for the Beach Boys-curious moving in either direction. And frankly, this one gets a helluva lot more mileage on my stereo than Pet Sounds ever will.

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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Today! by the Beach Boys
Originally released 3/2/65
Produced by Brian Wilson
27 min.

Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) by the Beach Boys
Originally released 6/28/65
Produced by Brian Wilson
25 min.

Capitol Records
Compilation Released 2001
Compilation Produced by Mark Linett
Total Running Time: 63 min.

SONGS:
Today!: Do You Wanna Dance - Good to My Baby - Don't Hurt My Little Sister - When I Grow Up (To Be a Man) - Help Me, Rhonda (LP Version) - Dance, Dance, Dance - Please Let Me Wonder - I'm So Young - Kiss Me Baby - She Knows Me Too Well - In the Back of My Mind - Bull Session With "Big Daddy"

Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!): The Girl from New York City - Amusement Parks USA - Then I Kissed Her - Salt Lake City - Girl Don't Tell Me - Help Me, Rhonda (Single Version) - California Girls - Let Him Run Wild - You're So Good To Me - Summer Means New Love - I'm Bugged at My Old Man - And Your Dreams Come True

BONUS TRACKS: The Little Girl I Once Knew - Dance, Dance, Dance (alternate) - I'm So Young (alternate) - Let Him Run Wild (alternate) - Graduation Day

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MORE BEACH BOYS:

Smiley Smile (1967) / Wild Honey (1967)




Recommended: Yes