Consider the taxonomy of the Beach Boys compilation. First, you have cheapies like Beach Boys Greatest Hits Vols. 1, 2 and 3, each gathering a dozen or so singles into a succinct package. With such a deep collection of quality hits, the Beach Boys could continue to repackage these in various combinations forever. Various permutations can still be found on cassette in gas stations from coast-to-coast.
Then there's Endless Summer, from 1974, the prototype for the expanded compilation that gathers hits but also attempts to position the band as an iconic snapshot of a bygone era. It's hard to convey now how massive that double-LP set was during the remainder of that decade. Widely considered all the Beach Boys anyone ever needed, Endless Summer charted for three straight years and launched the idea of the band as a touring oldies act-- a nostalgic fantasyland you could revisit where Vietnam never happened and baby boomers never had to face the responsibilities of parenthood. Almost everything on the record predated Pet Sounds, before things got heavy and complicated. Even #1 single "Good Vibrations", often called the band's (and sometimes pop music's) peak, had to wait for the CD reissue in the 80s to come along for the carefree ride. In 2003, a new set, Sound of Summer, properly updated the "Only Beach Boys You Ever Need" comp for the era of the 80-minute CD, and (again) went multi-platinum.
The third kind of Beach Boys collection tries to tell the alternate history of the band-- the one that didn't stop making music after Smile fell apart in 1967. This Beach Boys had to contend with an increasingly awkward-sounding bandname, naïve politics, a shift in creative energy away from Brian Wilson, and a generally fuzzy notion of what "The Beach Boys" as an idea was all about. Most Pitchfork readers are familiar with this period of the band's career-- they're used to debating how Wild Honey stacks up against Sunflower, and trying to figure out which of the mid-70s albums has the most to recommend. But most of this stuff, to many music fans, remains largely off the radar. These are the fans that alternative-history Beach Boys comps mean to bring into the fold.
Good Vibrations, from 1975, Ten Years of Harmony (1981), and Sunshine Dream (1982) were the first of these alternative histories, each offering a look at the "Pet Sounds and after" Beach Boys from a slightly different angle. The new compilation The Warmth of the Sun takes a similar approach and applies it to the Beach Boys' entire career. So along with a generous helping of the post-Smile material (nothing from Pet Sounds or Smiley Smile is here), there's also a sampling of minor earlier hits. There's even one 80s curio: a truly awful version of "California Dreamin'" cut for inclusion on Made in U.S.A., the 1986 half-old-faves/half-deep-cuts compilation notable for including four tracks from the then out-of-print (!) Pet Sounds. "California Dreamin'" is the highest-charting single here, hitting #8-- on the Adult Contemporary chart, that is. On the Pop charts, like almost all of these 28 songs, it didn't crack the Top 40.
Warmth of the Sun isn't chronologically sequenced; instead, songs seem to be grouped together in a rough thematic configuration. "All Summer Long" is an excellent opening thesis, but then the comp detours with four kitschy throwbacks in a row-- two about surfing ("Catch a Wave" and "Hawaii") and two about cars ("Little Honda" and "409"). The chorus of "Little Honda" is still something to behold, the way the backup vocals chug along like pistons while Mike Love gets us up to third gear. But "409" sounds like a middling test-run from the Chuck Berry rip-off days, and the dippy "Hawaii" is interesting only as history ("I don't know what town you're from, but don't tell me they have bigger waves/ Everyone that goes comes back with nothing but raves").
The meat of the lesser pre-Pet Sounds material are the songs that showed how far Brian Wilson's art had come even before he was considered a great artist. "Let Him Run Wild" (remixed for stereo here) is one of his most fully realized arrangements, the surging dynamics in the chorus perfectly mirroring the narrator's unhinged frustration at an unrequited lover's fondness for the bad boy, while Mike Love's "guess you know I waited for you, girl" bass part allows him to regain his composure. "The Little Girl I Once Knew" follows, and then when the bass notes introduce the breathtaking "Wendy" (also in a new stereo mix, with the famous cough deleted), we get the perfect triptych of romantic longing, Beach Boys-style.
Then come the post-Smile years, from which The Warmth of the Sun chooses remarkably well. Songs like "Forever", "Friends", and "Feel Flows" demonstrate how they turned into a very capable-- even adventurous-- group of songwriters. They were becoming "West Coast" in the 70s sense of the term, with songs that were tuneful, professionally sung and recorded, laidback, and vaguely spiritual. Throw in "Til I Die", "Cool, Cool Water" and the album version of "Surf's Up" and you're talking about tremendously sophisticated pop that ably extended the innovations of the 60s, admittedly by recycling old ideas.
We end, appropriately enough, with the couples-only prom-night classic "Warmth of the Sun". In addition to being one of the Beach Boys' most beautiful ballads, it also represents Capitol's hopes for the continuing appeal of the band's catalog, a collective wish that their music is permanently embedded in pop music's DNA, and that it, like the warmth of the sun itself, will only grow stronger in the coming years. As long as these kinds of smartly sequenced compilations keep on coming, such longevity seems like a safe bet.
