Good review of POB in the Sydney Morning Herald by Bernard Zuel (well known as a friend to the BB/BW canon):
Link:
http://www.smh.com.au:80/news/cd-reviews/pacific-ocean-blue-legacy-edition/2008/07/14/1215887523316.htmlPacific Ocean Blue: Legacy Edition
July 14, 2008
Not only was Dennis's 1977 record the first solo album by a Beach Boy but it was completed, released and very well-reviewed at the time.
As mythologised albums go, Dennis Wilson's much lesser-known Pacific Ocean Blue has a couple of things up on his brother Brian's fabled Smile: not only was Dennis's 1977 record the first solo album by a Beach Boy but Pacific Ocean Blue was completed, released and very well-reviewed at the time and not just revered in theory, and in pieces, for four decades by obsessives and tragics like me.
Of course, you don't get mythologised without drama and P.O.B. earned part of its status from the vinyl version being deleted in the early '80s and the briefly available CD doing the same thing a decade later — thereby making sure that hardly anyone could judge it for themselves, relying instead on its reputation.
The other part came from Wilson's reputation as the other Wilson, not the genius Brian or the sweet-voiced Carl but the drug-taking, life-gobbling, surf-loving, alcohol-guzzling and women-loving one who couldn't get his head/act/life together to make a second album before drowning in 1983, fat, fried and depressed.
Nature abhors a vacuum; pop music mythology loves it.
Inevitably, then, the first question raised by this lavishly packaged reissue of Pacific Ocean Blue with four previously unreleased tracks and 16 cuts which may or may not have made the putative second album, Bambu, is: does it justify its status as A Great Lost Album? I think not. It is too flawed, too varied and too unfocused to be so classified.
But it is a fascinating, occasionally brilliant and often incredibly moving album for those very flaws.
As a songwriter Dennis was obviously in Brian's shadow but parts of this and the Bambu sessions confirm Dennis's talent. Take the album opener, the near rock gospel River Song, which has such drive and yet such soul in a wonderful wash of sound. Or the rhapsodic Rainbows, like a mix of the Polyphonic Spree's exaltations and Elton John's craft.
But what really marks this album, what gives it the right to be seen as a vital album, is its emotional rawness, its baring of blasted hearts (his and others') and the legacy of drug and alcohol abuse, all mixed with sweetness and a ragged faith in humanity.
With his roughened voice to the fore, Friday Night, Thoughts Of You, Farewell To My Friend, End Of The Show and the bonus track Only With You cut through myth and go straight to truth. They're quite stunning. And why I think this album has less in common with Beach Boys records than such teetering-on-the-edge-of-life '70s albums as Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers, Chris Bell's I Am The Cosmos and Gene Clark's White Light. All imperfect but very personal.
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