New Beach Boys album - That's Why God Made the Radio

further details? depending on who he had build the studio that could be a major catch

Can't find the article where I read that, but it's listed on this site which notes he built a new addition to the house with an underground recording in its basement. A commenter who goes by Stewball (scroll to the second page) wrote this:

Yes, it is a nice home. I was the trim carpenter for the builder at the time, and I sub contracted the work in the recording studio. I also did alot of the trim in the main floor. There is a secret room in the master bedroom - that was my first "hidden room" Very cool experience. I learned a lot.. Got to meet Brian once - I also built his entertainment center. I still remember installing the gaberdine fabric walls.. I think I have more hours in that recording studio than he does... I spent about 10 months - finishing the studio.. Those were the days.

Uhh, a secret room in the master bedroom?

There's a place where I can go and tell my secrets to, in my room in my room

the implied comma between "in my room" and the second "in my room" was a mistake. He meant The room within his room.

The Beach Boys’ Crazy Summer
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/27/the-beach-boys-crazy-summer.html
Some good bits, but dumb angle -- "He heard voices, did drugs and fell apart. Can the band’s reunion tour help put Brian Wilson back together again?"
I mean, the guy has been an active, performing/recording musician for more than a decade now, he's probably about as put together as he's ever been.

then again:
Later that night, I run into a member of Wilson’s band on Canal Street. “Good show,” I say. “It was OK,” he replies. “Brian was having a bad day.” Apparently, Wilson woke up with a black eye that he couldn’t remember receiving, then got his shoelaces caught in an escalator and fell “flat on his face.” “It was the last thing this guy needed,” the band member continues. “So we had to step in. Brian’s the quarterback, and we’re like the linemen. We have to protect him.” You did an amazing job, I say; the harmonies were impeccable. He nods. “When my friends hear I’m touring with the Beach Boys, they’re like, ‘Oh, so you’re doing fairgrounds and stuff?’” he says. “And I’m like, ‘No, we’re with Brian Wilson.’ But, you know, when we performed Pet Sounds and Smile, that was art. That was Brian. Now we are kind of at the fairgrounds.”

Asked about the Beach Boys, Brian doesn’t mince words. “My new band is so much better,” he says. “They play better and they sing better, too. I have much better time with them anyway.”

What a dick, kinda, member of Wilson's band. Imo, the nu-Beach Boys last week was so much better than Brian Wilson and crew doing "Pet Sounds" with an orchestra ten years ago or whenever.

And yeah, duh the "new band" is so much better than the Beach Boys. Like, no shit, new band is hardly a band. It's session guys, basically. There's a reason it's Hal Blaine on "Pet Sounds" and not Dennis.

“Brian's one of those guys who can just walk over to your house, open the refrigerator, and make himself a sandwich,” Thomas said.

Not a bad SNL skit right there.

ha, yeah. that stuff w/ thomas was weird -- i feel like they had a really acrimonious lawsuit at one point?

Alex P review

another new one, i kind of like it!
http://www1.rollingstone.com/hearitnow/player/beachboys.html

Alex P review

"But just as you're about to dismiss the album entirely, something extraordinary happens. The final three tracks – From There to Back Again, Pacific Coast Highway and Summer's Gone – form a kind of suite that is easily the best thing Brian Wilson has put his name to in the last 30 years. Episodic, occasionally lapsing into silence, filled with shifts in tempo, the melodies impossibly beautiful, it takes the melancholy at the heart of Wilson's greatest work – from Pet Sounds to Til I Die – and repurposes it. In contrast to the rest of the album, which relies on creaky nostalgia, it concerns itself with ageing ("sunlight's fading and there's not much to say", sings Wilson on Pacific Coast Highway), death and the Beach Boys' legacy. "Our dreams hold on for those who still have more to say … it's time to go," offers Summer's Gone, undercutting all the gung-ho, we're-havin'-a-blast guff that comes before it in the same way the wistful, autumnal intro to California Girls seemed at odds with that song's sunkissed lechery. Wilson's vocals sound engaged with the subject, which seems faintly incredible given that on every other recent record he's made, he's sounded like a man forced at gunpoint to read his lyrics off a broken autocue."

Is this the part of the album I will love the most? Or that will now prove to be the most disappointing to me?

dunno -- there to back again sounds great (that's the one linked at rolling stone).

wow yeah that is actually really... good? who's singing lead, it doesn't sound like Brian really...?

is it bruce? definitely brian there towards the end, but not at the beginning.

yeah I recognize Brian's voice at the end but the beginning is someone I don't recognize. Admittedly I dunno what Al and Bruce's voices really sound like these days.

possibly stamos

I think that's Brian.

definitely Jardine now that I listen to it again.

brian starts singing on "the compromise..." part

yeah I think it's Al too (had to listen to "The Beak of Eagles" to compare lol)

In contrast to the rest of the album, which relies on creaky nostalgia

have to quibble with this - the music it's emulating is less well known than the '60s stuff but it's just as "nostalgic" in its recollection of past Beach Boys music. The first track of the three is straight up Disney Girls - which means it's actually nostalgia for nostalgia given the subject of the track.

Are you guys talking about the "sunlight's fading" line? That really sounds like Brian to me...listen to the vowel pronunciation on "not".

no I mean the whole first couple verses

if you've heard Brian recently, there is no way in hell he is singing those opening lines.

also the idea that there is some lack of wistful Beach Boys songs about aging, the end of summer, moving on etc. is laughable...

it's al for the first half and then brian takes over around 2:15 or so.

^^^

The first couple verses in "From There to Back Again" - I also think that's Al.

yeah that's what we're saying.
i really like this song! a nice surprise.

me too, I'm almost scared to listen to the rest of the album now.

"Isn't It Time" is like an unholy combination of all the things I dislike about both 15 Big Ones and Love You.

Mike Love sounds terrible.

the chorus of "Shelter" is really nice.

"Summer's Gone" (B. WIlson, J. Bon Jovi, J. Thomas)

Is this the part of the album I will love the most?

sound p much like a summary of Lucky Old Sun tbh, did you like that?

Is this the part of the album I will love the most? Or that will now prove to be the most disappointing to me?

also the idea that there is some lack of wistful Beach Boys songs about aging

If you want nostalgia, listen to "When I Grow Up", a wistful song about aging - starting at the ripe age of 14 and looking ahead year-by-year to how scary being 21 might be. The years really fly by quickly in the fadeout, which takes us from 22 all the way to 30 just before the coda fades into silence. One gets the sense that turning 30 must have felt like a distant riding into the sunset when it was recorded.

Youth, gotta love it....

also the idea that there is some lack of wistful Beach Boys songs about aging, the end of summer, moving on etc. is laughable...

Sorry about that last mispost

also the idea that there is some lack of wistful Beach Boys songs about aging, the end of summer, moving on etc. is laughable...

OK, aging literally means getting older. But I think there's a substantial difference between 60s songs in which aging means having to grow up and face responsibilities and now, when aging means facing up to death.

Til I Die, dude.

New track would be enjoyable but for pitch correction -- the Beach Boys harmonies were never quite in tune, so making them so screw things up.

Look ma, no pitch correction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDIBMaCTwFw

Fun (fun fun) to watch these old clips and hear them pull off the harmonies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgDApIGvFxA&feature=related

At my guitar lesson yesterday we were talking about what an insane chord progression you find in "California Girls," not just the descending chords in the chorus (that bring you back to the right place) but the A/B they throw in in the verse, specifically how so few (if any) pop ®acts were harmonically sophisticated enough at the time to throw in a jazzy chord like that.

xpost Til I Die isn't about aging - it's about our tininess in the eternal scheme of things. Having the word Die in a title doesn't something into a rumination on mortality. If it did, Bruce Willis's career would have been very different.

Aging is about our tininess in the eternal scheme of things! But yeah, I know, I get it.

the die hard movies are totally about aging, he's always getting too old for this shit

for the new songs,

man writingwise they aren't as bad as i feared, parts are even kind of amazing

but lord, the production is so sterile, and it's not even "80s" glossy which is at least an aesthetic, but i feel like all the bad things about music production ever have coalesced now on protools and it's just a nightmare