The Beach Boys- That’s Why God Made The Radio (Capitol Records, 2012)

That’s Why God Made The Radio is a nearly inconceivable thing – a Beach Boys album in 2012.  It marks the group’s 50th anniversary.  And it’s their first new release in ages, though exactly how long is largely a matter of opinion.

The last three records released under the Beach Boys name hit stores in 1996, 1992, and 1989, but one was a countrified all-remakes album (featuring only backing vocals from the band, with leads handled by various C&W artists), one was a pro-tools and synthdrums disaster (and featured no Brian Wilson involvement), and one was a cobbled-together mix of four new songs and six previously released tracks.  So, if you want to ignore technicalities and official discographies, you could make an argument that this is, for all intents and purposes, the first true Beach Boys disc since their self-titled full length in 1985.  That’s twenty-seven years.  And that not-insubstantial span of time was filled with a lot of instability and changes amongst the band.  Lawsuits, breakdowns, solo careers, semi-reunions, more lawsuits, varying touring incarnations, and even more lawsuits.  Founding member Carl Wilson passed away in 1998.  Al Jardine was barred from using the band’s name in association with his own musical endeavors.  Mike Love and Bruce Johnston continued to tour with an assortment of increasingly anonymous sidemen.

And yet.  During that time, Brian Wilson (after a great number of false starts and supposed returns to the spotlight) began to release records of his own.  And then, backed by a group of sympathetic and supportive musicians, he started touring, performing his songs to sold-out houses and rapturous acclaim around the world.  And to top it all off, he finally exorcised the demons of decades past by assembling and completing the legendary Smile album, and followed it up with an album of entirely new material (That Lucky Old Sun) that stands proudly alongside his finest work.

And now.  It’s 2012.  And somehow, against all odds and conventional wisdom, the surviving Beach Boys have reunited.  A box set of their original unreleased Smile sessions was released last fall, a world tour is underway, and, at long last, a new Beach Boys album is now available.  Expectations have been mixed, high hopes tempered with skeptical reflections on the long history of strife and sub-par releases.  A re-recording of “Do It Again”, released late last year, went a long way to reassure me that they still had the vocal chops, but I was still a little worried.

I didn’t need to be.  Thankfully, surprisingly, it’s good.  It’s a small-scale album.  It’s not experimental, it’s not challenging, it’s not boundary-pushing or earth-shattering.  It’s just really good.  To place it in the context of the Beach Boys’ career, it’s closest in sound to their late 70s and 80s material, but tonally it’s a close relation to That Lucky Old Sun.  It’s nostalgic, but it’s not the “back to the beach” unreality that the band’s name has been so often associated with over the past few decade.  There’s an undercurrent of something else, something deeper: a wistful revisiting of days gone by, an acknowledgment of mortality.  It’s unassuming, understated, and surprisingly touching.  Though the original members can’t hit the highest notes anymore, the harmonies are still as close and true as ever, just focused more on the middle ranges.  (And longtime associate Jeffrey Foskett is on hand to provide the swooping falsetto and complete the classic Beach Boys sound.)

The first track is, all by itself, justification for this album to exist.  Even if nothing that followed lived up to those opening notes, this minute-and-a-half of Californian choral majesty would make it worthwhile for the Beach Boys to have released this new record.  Ascending harmonies and melancholy piano set an immediate mood, and we’re adrift.  The timeless blend of parts, of sounds, of voices.  There’s nobody else in the world that could take these wordless sounds and make them feel so true.

And after that opener, the quality stays high, the tunes stay catchy, the harmonies stay as incomparable as they’ve ever been.  The pacing is deliberate, the sequence of tracks deftly mixing the cheerier impulses and the deeper emotions bubbling under the surface.  The songs work best when they’re concentrating on evoking old feelings, not trying recapture past glories.  There are some inevitable weak bits, but they’re soon forgotten; any moments of clumsy lyricism or ham-fisted instrumentation are quickly swept away by beautiful melodies and swelling vocals.  And there are a lot of highlights.  The tiny melodic shifts throughout the title track, the easy-going group singalong “Isn’t It Time”, the interwoven layers of vocals in “Shelter”, the tapestry of segments that comprise the closing trio of songs.  All the participants’ voices are in fine form –  Mike’s tone has mellowed pleasantly, Brian sounds confident and loose, and Al’s turns on lead sound, if anything, warmer and more robust than they did four decades before.

50 years after they first took the world by storm, conjuring images of an idyllic land of sea and sun, the Beach Boys are still here.  They’re still able to make us dream of California and the crisp ocean air, of friendship, and heartbreak, and love.  They can still tour, still make records, and still make us smile.  And they can still sing.  Man, can they ever still sing.

That’s Why God Made The Radio was released by Capitol Records on June 5, 2012, and is now available everywhere records are sold.