Don't Go Near the Water - predicts both the 1972 Clean Water Act as well as 1992's "Summer in Paradise." Weird ass song. You have this pleasant Mike Love part and then some very Brian Wilson interstitial parts. Then there's this strident Carl part where he's shouting very staccato. The backing is all chaotic and then he ends with a Little Richard "oooh" (predicting their future "Happy Endings" collab???). It's not a great sign when the Mike Love part returns as a welcome reprieve. Then the last 30 seconds or so is this pleasant instrumental bit. Alright, then.
Long Promised Road - Real cool hook from Carl in the chorus on this one. Probably a classic. Production ain't great with the lead vocal jarringly high and I wish I could hear a live version from the 80s or 90s when Carl's voice had substantially more grit, but those are minor critiques. This song is great.
Take a Load Off Your Feet - Catchy little song about how important your feet are and that you should take care of them. I guess that's what they chose to write about those days.
Disney Girls (1957) - The issue with 3/4 time is where do you put the snare? Where is the upbeat? Is it the 2nd or 3rd beat? Either one is wrong. You can go all oompahpah and do snare on 2nd AND 3rd beat, but no, don't do that. It's the same issue with 5/4 time, but that's such a god forsaken time signature, you only do it for the sake of doing it. You aren't trying to make something listenable if your song is in 5/4 (mild exception for The Rentals "My Summer Girl"). Even on this song, the drummer doesn't know what he's doing. On one chorus it goes on the 2nd beat, on another the 3rd. Oh fuck, it's Daryl "Drummer" Dragon on drums? Bruce does this song on his shitty 1977 solo album and wisely doesn't have drums. There's a song on this album called "Rock and Roll Survivor." And it's soft as shit. God he sucks so bad. What did you survive? "Oh no Blondie and Ricky rock too hard, I'm out!"
As for this song, it's probably the best thing I've heard from him, but that's not saying much. It's a deep nostalgia dive, but maybe not quite as schmaltzy as his usual stuff.
Student Demonstration Time - One of the most raucous, nasty instrumentals they've ever done. Sick leads presumably from Carl and some great distorted vocals. It's a cover of Riot In Cell Block 9, but with some of the dumbest lyrics ever committed to tape. To make matters worse, Mike is basically telling civil rights protestors to stop being so uppity.
Feel Flows - Carl's other song on the album is also a winner. Lots of good hooks throughout. The meandering guitar solo coinciding with the very late 60s flute solo isn't so hot and really drags on the song a bit. It's sub Long Promised Road, but has plenty of merit.
Lookin' at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) - Al does a pleasant enough pastiche of The Beatles. There's a skat part in the middle that sucks, but it's sub-2 minutes so whatever.
A Day in the Life of a Tree - I thought the two randos were bad, now we have their fucking manager singing a song about being a tree over some blaring church organ. This is the worst political biographical tree song since Rush's "The Trees." Who wants this shit?
Til I Die - I guess this isn't bad? The melody is really drab. Yeah it's got some weird Brian Wilson chord changes, but it doesn't add up to much for me.
Surf's Up - A track from the lost Smile sessions supposedly added to the album at the behest of the record company who thought "weird ass art songs from four years ago are sure to make this album a hit!"
The song is a ballad of sorts and I detect three distinct sections in this song. The first and second parts are piano led with strong quarter note pulse rhythms. The first section is more traditional with the melodies cycling through two times. There's some cool supporting instrumentation with a french horn and a descending glockenspiel that are well placed. The second section is more open ended with tempo shifts throughout. The tacked on coda is very Smile even if it was recorded for this album from the discarded 66/67 tapes even moving to a swung rhythm after being straight the remainder of the song.
I still don't know if I like this song or not. Like a lot of the Smile material, it is seemingly made up of disparate pieces of music with baffling chord changes and ambiguous key signatures. I don't know if Brian is winging it by ear or if he purposefully does this. Based on that video I posted awhile back, he doesn't seem to know much theory as Carl had to tell him what an ostinato and chord inversions are which suggests the latter. The vocal performances by Carl and Brian are some of their best. Melodically, it has some nice bits, even if it lacks the pop punch of GV. I am finally starting to understand the kind of wondrous/dreamy aspects of the song now that I understand the lyrical context better, but I'm still not 100% convinced it fully succeeds in execution.
Look, you have to establish context for these things. And I maintain that unless you appreciate the Fall of Constantinople, the Great Fire of London, and Mickey Mantle's fatalist alcoholism, live Freddy makes no sense. If you want to half-ass it, fine, go call Simon Schama to do the appendix.
