This week I listened to Pacific Ocean Blue by Dennis Wilson. It is no secret by now that I am in fact a Beach Boys fan, but despite that status I have not explored a lot of the solo work of any of their members. I find a lot of the time the solo work/side projects of a band I really enjoy tend to be a lot less interesting than the main band so I often just avoid them based on that. In ramping down for the final few weeks of this weekly album project, I decided I want to try to put some real effort into finding albums that actually would really interest me, so I decided to finally listen to a Beach Boys member's solo album. The thought of which one to listen to was an easy one for me though, as I had heard quite a lot about Dennis' solo output and how this album has a very cult following. This album took be a bit by surprise at first, as it is in fact quite different from most Beach Boys music, especially the stuff that enjoy. But I found to enjoy this uniqueness, it really shows to me that Dennis was not beholden to Brian or Carl musically, and was really able to write stuff that was really his. Dennis has some music on the Beach Boys albums that released prior to this album, but I can say that this is certainly quite different for the most part from those songs. Many of the tracks have these Funk and Blues inspired elements that are never really heard at all in Beach Boys music. The horns just blasting through the mix are certainly an obvious indicator of this, but then there are songs like, "Pacific Ocean Blues" and "Dreamer" that just have this total vibe to them. Real head-boppers those two are! The album also has a very soft and pretty side, which is a little more in line with the Beach Boys songs that Dennis is known for, such as "Forever" off of the Beach Boys Sunflower. My favorite two off the album would have to be "Thoughts of You" and "You and I". The former has the beautiful crescendo through the song and is certainly one of my favorite moments off of the album. It has a beautiful string arrangement that makes the crescendo just sound massive. The latter track is just a beautiful soft rock track with some real nice guitar lines strung throughout. It paints pictures of being outside and just relaxing in the sun, which is certainly something nice to think about with Winter fast approaching. The only thing that drags the album down a little bit is the production. It is certainly a very 70s sounding album with that big production style. For the most part it works, but I think sometimes it can sound a little overproduced and muddy because of it. Besides that little gripe, this is a fantastic album and I can see why this has such a cult following, 9/10 album
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