Album #5
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008Pacific Ocean Blue - Dennis Wilson So what if it just came out on Tuesday. Pacific Ocean Blue is not only the best solo Beach Boys record it stands toe to toe with Brian Wilson’s best Beach Boys material and fights it to a draw. You will never and have never heard a song like River Song in this or any life. What a tremendous release this is. I had been trying to buy cassette and vinyl copies of this off of ebay for years but have always come up short. The new two disc legacy edition makes me so glad that my first experience with this record is with some of the best remastered sound i have ever heard. Everything just jumps out of the speakers and sounds like magic. I am only up to record #5 on my list but this is by far the oddest record you are going to see. I dont mean odd as in unlistenable but odd in that it makes me like boogie rock. Odd in that i takes these ballads that are almost vomit inducingly cliche and turns them into gut wrenching musical confessions. Odd in that it would sound even more odd if it were not so completely over the top. I was hoping when i saw that they were finally re-releasing this record after being out of print for 20 years that it would be as amazing as it is. I went in with as high expectations as i could make myself have and it does not in anyway disappoint. The second disc, his unfinished 2nd record titled Bambu, is even weirder than the first but it equally lovely and Taylor Hawkins, of the Foo Fighters, perfectly catches the essence of Dennis Wilson when he sings over the track Holy Man, a track which Dennis Wilson never got to sing vocals on before he died. I really cant say enough about this record except get it and live it.
