I feel slightly hypocritical starting this review. Much as I enjoy reading the enthusiastic recommendations by other contributors to this page, I occasionally find myself saying 'You're absolutely correct - it's an amazing album, but is it really UNSUNG?' I'm sure that most of the subscribers to Head Heritage already know and love such works of genius as Forever Changes or Tago Mago and don’t need to be educated as to their greatness. But lately I've come to realise that sometimes an LP has such an effect on you that you can't help shouting about it even if you are just preaching to the converted. And now and then you find a classic album which you think you’ve always loved but then remember that it didn’t seem so special on the first listen, in which case an additional recommendation wouldn’t go amiss. One such example is The Beach Boys’ 1970 LP Sunflower. When I first purchased it two decades ago it was an album I was desperate to hear because I kept reading how great it was, but was initially left wondering what all the fuss was about. While I could accept its merits as a genuine group effort, with all six band members sharing the creative duties more equally than on any other Beach Boys album, it just sounded too sugary to my ears. The more I played it, however, the more I realised that its greatness lies in the very fact that it contains the sweetest music the boys ever concocted. And that really is saying something. Admittedly, Bruce Johnston’s two contributions are rather sickly, but I couldn’t imagine the album without them. Moreover, while many of the group’s most famous recordings are inextricably linked with the summertime, this album exudes such incredible warmth that I find it the perfect tonic during the cold dark days of December. Therefore I’d like to argue that one reason for submitting this review to Unsung is to put forward the proposition that The Beach Boys are underrated as a winter band. And while Sunflower is highly regarded by those in the know, it doesn’t seem to have joined Pet Sounds and Surf’s Up in the canon of All Time Classics.

The Beach Boys had much to prove in 1970. Increasingly unfashionable in their home country and at the end of a contract with Capitol Records, the band was under pressure to deliver something pretty special for new label Reprise. So when a 12 song LP entitled ‘Add Some Music’ was brought to the table it was rejected by label boss Mo Ostin who told the group to go back to the studio and produce some stronger material. Half the songs were ditched, to be replaced by 4 songs culled from an unreleased final album recorded for Capitol in 1969, and 2 brand new recordings with which to finish each side on a high. Thus a perfectly acceptable album got replaced by an outstanding one. And Dennis Wilson’s ‘Slip On Through’ got moved from the end of side one to the start of the album where it rightly belongs.

And what an opening track! Dennis kicks things off with a soul stomper, his vocals coming in before you realise it’s even started, while a sinister horn section creeps downstairs. The Beach Boys had already shown themselves adept at aping the Motown sound on the Wild Honey LP, but the sheer invention of the background vocals takes this song to another plane altogether. Barely noticeable but definitely there during the first verse, they become shrill and incisive during the sock-it-to-‘em chorus and then take a distinctly eerie turn. Just listen to the ghostly, ethereal harmonies that accompany the second verse and tell me that you don’t feel spooked out. Pounding away throughout the whole song is a cowbell rendered unrecognisable by a weird reverb, making this a perfect start to an album chock full of friendly songs with oddball details. Brian Wilson’s ‘This Whole World’ comes next, packing what feels like an album’s worth of music into less than two minutes. The melody twists and turns around chords that seem to change with every second note, but it flows so beautifully, and the lead vocals (from Brian and Carl) are so ecstatic, that you can’t help but be taken along for the ride. It was ages before I realised how brilliant the guitar playing is on this song, a testimony to the way the considerable musical dexterity is never fore-grounded, each instrument being just a small part that goes up to make an organic whole. ‘Add Some Music To Your Day’ is an unashamedly sweet tribute to the way that music can transform daily life. When performing this song live Brian Wilson always asks his audience to pay special attention to the rather gauche lyrics, which says a lot about the continued importance of music to his day-to-day wellbeing. It is a song so free of cynicism that it is easy to try to resist its charms on the first few listens. But after a while you will succumb to its absolute niceness, and delight in the adorable directions taken by the main melody, sung in turns by each member of the group. Originally the title track of the rejected first version of the album, it expresses a sentiment which the music on Sunflower consistently demonstrates to be essentially true. The next two songs were both rescued from the 1969 Capitol sessions. ‘Got To Know The Woman’ is a Dennis Wilson throwaway, given substance by the sheer exuberance that permeates the performance. Dennis seems to be having a blast, whooping with camp delight when he sings ‘I just met a woman on my way home, she just BLEW my mind’ and breaking up with mock laughter at the ridiculousness of his own machismo. Female vocalists provide energetic support on the gospelly chorus while Mike Love weighs in with some great rumbling bass vocals. Orgasmic levels of excitement are evident at the fade out as the drums crash and the ladies shriek, but this burst of sexual energy is short-lived; Bruce Johnston, the group’s very own Ned Flanders, performs an instant castration with ‘Deirdre’, a song that The Osmonds might have rejected for being too cheesy. The gusto of the rhythm section saves it from being totally objectionable, and I admit to getting a certain amount of guilty pleasure from the winsome flutes fluttering in the background, but it is a definite weak point on the album. The sugary taste is immediately brushed away by ‘It’s About Time’, a fantastic rocker written to order by Dennis, Carl and Al to satisfy Mo Ostin’s demands. A pounding piano intro, frenzied percussion (including some ferocious conga playing), a searing guitar solo and a superb lead vocal from Carl make for a magnificent close to side one.

Side two opens with another Bruce Johnston own-goal, the rather maudlin ‘Tears In The Morning’. It’s nicely arranged and well performed, but it just feels heavy handed compared to what the rest of the band was coming up with. Thankfully the remainder of the album is sustained brilliance, with the next two songs being further refugees from the 1969 Capitol sessions. Some sources suggest that this lost album was going to be called Reverberation, in which case ‘All I Wanna Do’ could have easily been a surrogate title track. As a piece of songwriting it is as unadventurous as its name (previous album 20/20 had already included a song called 'All I Want To Do'), but the production is something else entirely, full of flanged vocals and reverbed synthesizers making this probably the second trippiest thing The Beach Boys ever recorded (the following year's 'Feel Flows' takes first prize in this category). No such trickery is needed on Dennis Wilson’s ‘Forever’. Again, a very simple song, but achingly beautiful, it stays on the right side of mawkish thanks to a restrained arrangement and superb vocals, including a wonderful wordless coda where Brian gets to demonstrate the sweetness of his falsetto shortly before he lost it altogether. ‘Our Sweet Love’ is another unashamedly nice song in the vein of ‘Add Some Music’. Without drawing too much attention to itself it seems to sum up the tone of the whole album, the shimmering bed of strings conveying a warmth that you could sunbathe in. Bruce Johnston then redeems himself by hitting just the right tone with his lead vocal on Brian and Al’s ‘At My Window’, one of my all-time favourite Beach Boys songs. Little more than an account of a bird landing on a windowsill, it is totally inconsequential but beautifully detailed, with lovely finger-picking on acoustic and electric guitar, wistful little melodies on the flute, Brian Wilson clumsily reciting in French and, my favourite moment, the sudden whispered ‘WINDOW!’ Dreamlike and nostalgic, it magnifies a tiny moment to mystical proportions. This musical impressionism is taken to even greater heights with the closing track. ‘Cool, Cool Water’ was the other song newly assembled for the reconfigured album, but it has its roots in recordings made back in 1967. Fragments of this song come from the SMiLE and Wild Honey sessions, but here they are woven into an absolute masterpiece of harmonic exercises and experimental production. The lyrics are minimal and often laughable (‘In an ocean or in a glass/Cool water is such a gas’), but their unimportance emphasises the sheer delight of the sound of the voices. During the middle section, where ocean roar crashes menacingly over atypical freeform vocalising, it almost sounds as if The Beach Boys are searching for, and discovering, entirely new ways of singing, and the ‘Water, water’ chant during the moog-inflected coda is just magical.

Sunflower has a casual brilliance that makes it an absolute peak in The Beach Boys career. Whereas the more celebrated Pet Sounds is the ultimate auteur album, famously concocted by Brian Wilson while the rest of the group toured the world, Sunflower is a wonderful mixture of ideas being thrown in from all directions (often quite leftfield). In less skilled hands it could have been a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, but the result is miraculously uncluttered. Much credit for this must go to engineer Stephen Desper, with his obsessive dedication to recording in true stereo (as outlined on the record cover) as well as the remarkable session musicians hired to play on the album. Most importantly, those famous harmonies hit hitherto undreamed of heights. I suspect that many of the vocals were varispeeded, which combined with tape echo and extra bright EQ make them sound like voices from another dimension. But it doesn’t really matter how they did it – when something is this transcendental it’s easy to believe that it arrived fully formed. Sadly, despite the extraordinary good work put into it, Sunflower failed to restore the group’s fortunes in the US. An album as defiantly unhip as this one was never going to find favour with that fickle arbiter of taste Rolling Stone Magazine (just check out that cover photo of the band posing with their children on a sunny golf course). Their next album Surf’s Up, with its more downbeat tone, social conscience and lyrical pretentiousness was the one that made The Beach Boys fashionable again. Despite the odd clumsy moment it is still highly regarded, and rightly so, but I can’t help feeling that Sunflower is the purer statement. Amazingly both albums now come packaged together on a single, lovingly annotated CD, meaning Sunflower has entered many people’s record collections by stealth. If like me you dismissed it on the first listen, give it another go. It’s surprisingly easy to love.

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