1970s Albums review 1 - The Beach Boys

Aloha, I am starting with my fave band ever, the Beach Boys and their four early 70s albums, beginning with 1970's Sunflower. This was their first post capital records album and was more of a group effort due to a variety of factors including Brian Wilson's well documented mental health problems at the time. The album sounded very new in terms of the classic Beach Boys sound, but still retained the essential and magical harmonies that the band became world famous for. The album was recorded in quadrophonic sound which gave it a unique lushness on the production side. I remember one UK music journalist enthusing that it was their 'Sgt. Pepper', it was that good. It is certainly my favourite 70s Beach Boys album, and includes a lot of vocal experimentation with the (Smile) track 'Cool, cool water' which is a bit trippy, plus Dennis Wilson's tender love ballad 'Forever'. The UK version had the recent top five single 'Cotton fields' on too. My rating 9.5/10. The second 70s album the band came up with was 'Surf's Up' from 1971. This album was another group effort and a bit rockier too. Carl Wilson (the band's best vocalist in my opinion) took over production command from Brian, and the result was an album that resonated with the hippy movement as it had a few environmental songs on it such as 'Don't go near the water', and included another ex-Smile track, 'Surf's Up' which was also the album title. My rating 9/10. The next 1972 album in the series was a bit rushed, it was titled 'Carl and the Passions', which was one of the bands early '60s names before they became famous, but had some memorable moments on it including an unusual (for the Beach Boys) rocking single 'You need a mess of help (to stand alone)', and a few meditation type songs which partly explored the philosophy of TM and the Maharishi. In short a good album rather than a great one, and now the band included two non-white South Africans, Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fatarr, which gave it a much funkier sound on most of the cuts. My rating 7/10. The final album in this quartet was a pretty good return to high standards form, 1973's Holland. Unusually for this album the band moved themselves and a recording studio to a small Dutch town close to Amsterdam. The result was a success and Holland sold well encompassing a solid rock type sound with those usual Beach Boys trademark harmonics. The album also included the single and classic concert track 'Sail on sailor' which was a minor hit on both sides of the pond. My rating 9/10, a very good album indeed. This then was the period known as the 'hippy' Beach Boys, when the band throw off their corny candy stripe shirt period from before, and all grew beards and hair! They became 'progressive' and relevant to the counter-culture and anti-Vietnam war movement that was happening in the US at that time. In fact the Beach Boys have always had a transcendental side to their music and their sound developed into a spiritual one after the early teen years were over, and Brian Wilson moved on to create the incredible influential Pet Sounds from 1966, and the abandoned psychedelic Smile album from 1967 (eventually released in various versions after 2004). Surf's Up!