From early 1966 to early ’67, the Beach Boys matured from a platform for Brian Wilson’s songwriting and production into a fully democratic band. As Wilson and Los Angeles session musicians were laboring over Pet Sounds and the infamously scrapped Smile, a live quartet—led by Brian’s brother Carl—toured the world, with Bruce Johnston replacing the stage-shy Brian. But during the Summer of Love, as Wilson’s Smile lost focus, these two visions of the Beach Boys merged and created something new—as documented on the remarkable 2xCD set 1967 - Sunshine Tomorrow. These recordings make it possible to hear the Beach Boys simultaneously as the moody pop geniuses of Pet Sounds and the fresh-faced surf-rockin’ teens from Hawthorne, Calif.—and, for that matter, the unabashed nostalgia-mongers of their later years.
Sunshine Tomorrow assembles the bulk of the Beach Boys’ post-Smile 1967 work. There are outtakes and demos from two albums, titled Smiley Smiley and Wild Honey, as well as pieces of a scrapped live record, a live studio session, and concert versions. The compilation is anchored up top by the first stereo mix of Wild Honey—a homemade, detuned, piano-based affair, where the band found a new voice for their ebullient early ’60s bounce. Clocking in at just over 20 minutes, Wild Honey is pure fun from the theremin burst opening of the title track to off-kilter folk-pop miniatures like “I’d Love Just Once to See You.”
Though most of the tracks are credited to the songwriting team of Brian Wilson and Mike Love, Wild Honey’s key is “How She Boogalooed It,” an original R&B tune credited to every Beach Boy except Brian. The other four members, along with Brian’s tour replacement Johnston, were beginning to contribute to the Beach Boys in unprecedented ways. That was especially true of Carl, who was beginning to take over the producer’s role. For those already familiar with the sweet charms of Wild Honey, this new mix reveals details throughout, like the DIY Pet Sounds-style busyness of “Aren’t You Glad” and the bass-led “Let the Wind Blow.” But the set’s value comes in the outtakes, rehearsals, live recordings, and even fake live recordings, revealing a band that retained far more ambition than their two modest 1967 LPs suggested. Though often framed as the band’s discovery of R&B, Sunshine Tomorrow reveals Wild Honey to contain almost as many connections to brother Brian’s sad-boy masterpieces and psych-pop as it does to the surf-rockers of yore.