The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds 40th Anniversary CD / DVD (EMI)
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
What can we say about 'Pet Sounds' that hasn't been said before? Sorry - nothing. The rest of the music press has had four decades to rearrange various superlatives about this one, and they've done so in pretty much every combination available. I'm not being defeatist here, I'm being realistic. If you don't know how good 'Pet Sounds' is, well, 'Pet Sounds' is really, really bloody good. Shocker.
Forty years since its original release (and ten years after the 30th anniversary release, yawn...) comes this reissue, containing both a mono and stereo mix of the original LP on one disc, and a DVD full of interviews, videos, photo reels and the like on another. My only worry - 'Pet Sounds' is, we all know, magic. Now, could a DVD delving in to the process of its creation take away from the sorcery of the whole thing somewhat? Luckily no, for a couple of reasons, the first being that Brian Wilson now looks so charmingly befuddled by day to day life that the fact he ever managed to create something requiring this amount of meticulous thought and devotion is nothing short of a miracle. Also, the insights given in to the process by the footage make the achievement, even by a man in his prime, still seem not of this world.
Why is it worth owning? Well, it's true that 'Pet Sounds' has been around for long enough and been fawned over to such an embarrassing extent that if you've not got it by now, you probably aren't going to get it - and you certainly needn't fork out the extra for this big ol' package if you are tempted by it. If you're a 'Pet Sounds' obsessive, and there are many, it seems to me this is worth owning only for the DVD - a consistently entertaining and informative package it is, but with one real moment of beauty that justifies its purchase even to one who might have the record on many other formats.
There's a point, you see, where legendary Beatles producer George Martin sits next to Brian Wilson, with the original tapes for Pet Sounds at his fingertips via a mixing desk, and as he quizzes Brian about the process, he's allowed, like a kid in a toy shop, to play about with the levels, remixing it as he pleases. Wilson stops him, only to say that somehow, he's created a mix of 'God Only Knows' more beautiful even than the one he managed to craft forty years ago. Martin dismisses it as Wilson merely being polite. Brian however looks as if he's about to break in to tears.
So what is there left to say about 'Pet Sounds' that hasn't already been said? Very little. But what there is, this DVD does excellently.
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