The Smiley Smile Message Board

Which stuido album showcases The Beach Boys at their peak as a vocal group?

I was listening to some Friends acapella tracks and was struck by just how tight they were as a vocal group. To my mind, they were not as tight with the pure voices of their youth (early 60s) on one end, and the rougher voices in their later years (mid 70s and beyond) made them less tight on the other end. But I'm not sure which album is them at their absolute best vocally. I'm thinking it's gotta be somewhere between Today! and Surf's Up. What say you?

Great question and difficult to answer.

Two vocal performances that are really on another level include
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Breakaway

If I had to pick the BBs' absolute zenith in terms of the effort that they were putting into the vocal sessions and the quality of the output, I'd probably pick the Heroes & Villains sessions c. Jan-Feb 1967.

So I'm possibly going to go against the current, but I'd say their Little Deuce Coupe album from '63 is their most vocally ambitious/perfect album.

'Spirit of America' is a great example of how many vocals elements Brian could lay on a track and yet still make it sound so cohesive/clear. It's not just a layer of vocals harmonizing the same melody, but Mike is doing a bass thing, Brian's doing a high range thing, and it's all flowing with these harmonies of the main melody (and there's probably more going on than that). And the entire album is like that. 'Car Crazy Cutie' and 'Cherry Cherry Coupe' are underrated gems full of these far out vocal elements....Mike's bass line on the chorus of CCC is one of my favorite vocal moments in their entire catalogue.

'A Young Man Is Gone' is one of the most prayerful tracks (besides 'Our Prayer') that Brian ever put on an album. So much vocally going on with that.

Pet Sounds will always be my favorite Beach Boy album; it perfectly balances Brian's genius with instrumental production with his almost ethereal knowledge of harmony. But since the two balance out, it doesn't really showcase how far these guys could take their vocal harmony...which is why I think LDC is the album that best demonstrates how talented these guys were at harmony (and how talented Brian was at writing the harmony parts).

Interesting choice, Rab, but I think I gotta go with Today!

Totally agree about both.

There’s something about the blend on Friends that raises it for me. I think that it’s that Brian’s falsetto had take on a slightly different, crisper tone by then. And the warm recording and mix. Just beautiful.

For me, the Smile Sessions really showcase the intricacy of their vocal blend.  Cabinessence (esp Iron Horse), Heroes and Villains and Vegetables are on another level of genius in terms of vocal arranging and performing.

After that, Sunflower.

Forgive me for going the clichéd route here but probably the Pet Sounds/SMiLE albums demonstrated the band's vocal harmony prowess the most ambitiously.  Their harmonies always sounded good but things would never be quite the same after Brian's collapse as the bandleader.  That's not to say there weren't any good moments to be had following those albums though.  Right up to Surf's Up there were plenty of great group vocal moments.  It seemed around the So Tough album that harmonies seemed to take more of a backseat as the individual band members came more into their own.