The Beach Boys’ 2012 album “That’s Why God Made The Radio” was something of a miracle. It included all the surviving original members, together for the first time in over a decade, performing brand new sunshine-packed songs which almost felt like classics. Sadly, in spite of the Boys’ insistence that “the good times never have to end,” the reunion would be short-lived.
On his own once more, enigmatic frontman Brian Wilson has released “No Pier Pressure,” an album of original material featuring a few guest collaborators. In stark contrast to The Beach Boys’ last record, “No Pier Pressure” is almost entirely a disaster.
The record starts off innocuously enough with “This Beautiful Day,” a short piece of Wilson’s signature vocal harmonies set to piano accompaniment. It’s a forgettable song, but not necessarily a bad one.
The same cannot be said of the next song, “Runaway Dancer,” featuring Capital Cities’ Sebu Simonian. The track’s absurd smooth-jazz tenor sax introduction quickly gives way to a bland disco beat and outdated synths. The saxophone also reappears every time Wilson finishes another inane chorus about the titular dancer, on the run for reasons never made fully clear. In short, “Runaway Dancer” is an embarrassing mess.
The following track, “Whatever Happened,” featuring ex-Beach Boys Al Jardine and David Marks, isn’t bad so to speak — it’s just pointless, slow and harmonically uninspired. Basically, it sounds like a mediocre Beach Boys song, the one you always skip in favor of something less cliche. The same can be said of later tracks “Half Moon Bay,” “The Right Time” and “Tell Me Why.” Nothing is necessarily wrong with them, but from someone who was once so innovative, the songs are rather pathetic now — as Wilson sings on “Tell Me Why”: “Kind of funny, but mostly sad.”
Perhaps the most inexcusable track on the album is “Our Special Love,” a collaboration with collegiate a cappella star Peter Hollens. The generic beatboxing and insipid lyrics (“She’s your everything / keeps you wondering”) are bad enough, but then Hollens starts singing and it’s positively jarring. Brian Wilson has a very particular vocal style, smooth and tightly double-tracked, and Hollens’ straightforward a cappella lead-tenor voice just sounds wrong in the same context. There is nothing good to be said about this a cappella nightmare.
The same issue plagues “On The Island,” which features She & Him. Zooey Deschanel has a genuinely lovely voice, and she starts the song off as a cheesy but inoffensive bit of tropical-inflected light-jazz. Then Wilson comes in, and the juxtaposition just makes no sense whatsoever. Apparently the producers could not be bothered to have these collaborators even try to blend with Wilson’s style, and the result is more or less unlistenable.
Yet, “No Pier Pressure” does have a single absolute gem: “Saturday Night.” While it technically features Nate Ruess (of Fun.), to call the song a collaboration would be a joke. Ruess completely steals the show, and he actually sings like Brian Wilson. That is to say, the producers could have done this for the other featured artists but chose not to. Ruess’s naturally powerful voice takes on a distinctly Beach Boys-esque quality when double-tracked, and as a result Wilson himself actually ends up sounding out of place when he sings a few lines of the bridge. Wilson’s part aside, “Saturday Night” sounds like an impeccably catchy Fun. song. Ruess ought to use Beach Boys-style backing vocals more often, as they suit him perfectly.
“No Pier Pressure” is not an album worth listening to. Like the pun in the album’s title (the Beach Boys sang about beaches, beaches have piers and Brian Wilson presumably had to peer-pressure artists into performing on this awful record), the songs are half-baked at best. Check out “Saturday Night” and pretend it’s just a Nate Ruess tribute to the Beach Boys, then go listen to “Pet Sounds” and weep for Brian Wilson’s former songwriting and producing prowess.
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