Freedom Wind (Dead Oceans)

If you’ve ever poured over the Beach Boys’ output between 1965 and 1970, then this South Carolina sextet’s debut will have you shaking your head in a combination of disbelief and admiration. The opening track, “Forever”, sets the tone with the crashing “Be My Baby” drumbeat that Brian Wilson appropriated for “Don’t Worry Baby”, and which signalled his own perilous future slide from musical genius to sandbox-bound lunatic. It could be read as some sort of half-baked meta-textual comment on the Explorers Club’s own project here, but probably shouldn’t be.

This is high-class mimicry, and not much else. Lyrically, there’s zero going on, prime examples being “Everybody want to live, one more time/Everybody let that freedom wind blow your mind”. Still, it’s all pulled off impeccably, with the period’s L.A.–studio idiosyncrasies intact, and the compositions and arrangements tantalizingly close to some of the best moments of the Beach Boys canon. Hence, “Forever” mimics the stabbing guitar embellishments of “Pet Sounds”, “Honey, I Don’t Know Why” aims for the raggedy R & B of “Wild Honey”, and “In the Country” provides us with the Explorers Club’s own pocket symphony, like a newly discovered Smile outtake.

Aside from its irrelevance, the problem here might be that Freedom Wind is circumscribed by the band’s good taste. Some listeners (i.e. me) might be left to ask whether it wouldn’t be nice (and certainly more instructive) to try and recreate the Beach Boys at their shittiest, rather than their best. Which young band of brave adventurers is up for using “Kokomo” as their song template, or the weedy and brain-dead protest song “Student Demonstration Time”? We all want to be Brian Wilson, but it takes real vision to be as terminally crap as Mike Love.