Well, this album definitely sounds like the Beach Boys. Could they sound any other way? Listening to this, I imagined how much it must have sucked to have been the baritone Beach Boy. The answer is clear: quite a bit.
There's a lot to love here - I love the very end of "You Still Believe in Me." "Sloop John B" is also pretty timeless. The instrumentation and arranging throughout is inventive and kind of magical.
Here's what's terrible: after the 14th track, my CD of Pet Sounds featured alternate takes...of every song I'd just heard. I hate this. I hate it. If you're going to put an alternate track of a song on your album, it should be substantially different than the primary version. Maybe you include children yodeling. Maybe the whole song sounds awesome executed backwards or on timpani. These tracks were not that different, so there was no point to enduring 14 more tracks of the same songs.
I also don't think that the Beach Boys sound very Californian or Floridian. They sound like music you'd have heard on the Cape. If popped collars could make music, it would be this. That's not all bad, of course, but it can feel a little precious sometimes.
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