THE BEACH BOYS
MIU Album (1978)
Brother/Reprise
Produced by RON ALTBACH & AL JARDINE
In 1967, the Beach Boys followed up their masterpiece, PET SOUNDS, in the least predictable fashion imaginable, a move that kept them alienated from audiences for years to come. Eleven years later, after regaining their following and recording one of the most brilliant albums of the '70s, they repeat their mistake. SMILEY SMILE, the album after PET SOUNDS, was a bizarre pastiche of endearing but seemingly unfinished songs, full of barbed humor and hidden elegance. MIU ALBUM, the polished release following the raw, uninhibited LOVE YOU, removes all subtlety and bombast from the band's formula, perversely creating a half-hour of synth-heavy adult contemporary mush. It is their first complete failure as a band, and what a failure it is.

The transition boggles the mind, but it's easily explained: Brian Wilson gave up his production helm after LOVE YOU bombed, leaving Al Jardine to take over. Jardine is joined by Ron Altbach (forced on the band by Warner Bros.), who becomes the first outside producer on a Beach Boys record since Nick Venet and imposes a godawful "mature" sheen, a slick professionalism, to what handled differently could have been a fair enough Beach Boys LP. So it's no wonder that "She's Got Rhythm," the opening track, sounds like watered-down LOVE YOU, Brian's usual idiosyncracies with all the energy drained; those are the ground rules for an album that never really compensates for its awful production. Altbach and Jardine manage to turn the Beach Boys' exceptional harmonies and a cast of state-of-the-art synthesizers as well as the usual easy-listening penchant for exaggerated string sections into one big trebly mess.

Instead of taking any kind of a risk in any direction, the band is standing firmly in the middle of the road; MIU frequently sounds like Barbara Streisand or Debbie Boone or some such sad-sack excuse for pop music, circa 1978: bland music for "adults" who are far too elite for the down-to-earth wonder and lust of the last album. Ultimate irony is that Brian's songs, mostly written in the interim between HOLLAND and 15 BIG ONES, although lesser compositions, are still in the LOVE YOU mold. "Hey Little Tomboy," "Sweet Sunday Kinda Love," "Matchpoint of Our Love," and the wonderful "My Diane" all clash with Altbach's sugary Muzak so terribly that the juxtaposition is almost a rebellious statement in and of itself. And how many "mature adults" buying this album with its pseudo-sophisticated cover for an evening of relaxation would relate to lyrics that verge on pedophilia? "Hey little tomboy, come sit on my lap / I've got things that I've got to tell you." Yeah, sit on Mike's lap. Sounds healthy.

Brian's melodic gifts are more than intact; every single one of these mildly annoying songs creeps into your head without so much as a third, or in some cases even a second, listen. That doesn't mean they're good (see Wings). A major chunk of MIU comes from an aborted Christmas album made to fulfill the Reprise contract, with vocals rerecorded and lyrics rewritten in the interest of seasonal ambiguity. Thus, "Bells of Christmas" becomes "Belles of Paris," etc. In whatever form they appear, these songs are nothing special. "Kona Coast" crosses some kind of line, though, when it revises the chorus of "Hawaii" verbatim, only backed by grating MOR soundscapes instead of an infectious young rock band. Indeed, the nostalgia that sent 15 BIG ONES crashing down is still in evidence everywhere. This time the surfin' revisionists have a crack at the Del Vikings' "Come Go with Me" and, worse yet, Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue." The purpose of this is somewhat elusive on paper, but once you hear the recordings it is even more so; why turn a rock chestnut into indigestible sap in which the only audible energy is simulated? Why would anyone listen to this when they could easily buy a Buddy Holly record? Whoever can answer that must have been the people who made both "Peggy Sue" and "Come Go with Me" major hits.

In its better moments, MIU ALBUM still feels strained. "Pitter Patter" and "Wont'cha Come Out Tonight" almost rock but can't thanks to Altbach, who goes so far as to contribute a song of his own to the collection; "Winds of Change" is even more antiseptic than most of this fluff and simply does not belong on a Beach Boys album. Hiring the man was clearly futile, as MIU ALBUM was no more successful than the last effort and was roundly panned in the media. What Warner Bros., in hiring an outside producer to clean up the sound, clearly did not understand, and what I'm not certain even the Beach Boys themselves understand, is that mass appeal bypassed this band years ago. The simple truth is the Beach Boys' sound is no longer commercial; if their classics were released today they would go nowhere, and their continued success in concert is due more than anything to the ruthless nostalgia that has been swallowing Baby Boomers in mass quantities since around 1974. No amount of production sense can change the fact that the Beach Boys play rock & roll, and rock & roll without pretension of a "heavy" breed or an image attached has been out of style for generations. They may glaze their work until it glows with half-hearted glitter ("Kokomo") but it will not be the work of the same band that made "409" and "Little Deuce Coupe" and "All Summer Long," and anything they do create specifically to please a larger audience is bound to be impossibly dated within less than a decade of its creation. The ignorance of that audience is what made LOVE YOU so fabulous; the pandering to it, or the attempt thereof, is what makes MIU ALBUM so pathetic.