Brain Wilson is a producer, singer/songwriter, musician and co-founder of American rock group “The Beach Boys.” His 11th studio album “No Pier Pressure” was released on April 7.
The album might sound very unusual for a first time listener. It starts off with the song “The Beautiful Day,” which has a very strong melody to it and sounds incredible, but then the album takes a huge step backward with the song “Runaway Dancer,” which has a very campy instrumental to it.
Wilson singing on”Runaway Dancer” is off beat which makes the track very dreadful to listen to. The chorus to the song might make you cringe.
“Yeah it’s been the talk of the town; she’s walkin’ ’round everywhere lookin’ for an answer; someone got her foolin’ around actin’ like she don’t care, runaway dancer, runnin’, runnin’, runaway, runaway dancer,” Wilson sings.
The song does have a dancing melody to it but the lyrics are not good. The next track on the album takes an even bigger step backward with a very slow song that manages to sound like a campy Disney reject song.
The best song and collaboration on the album is “On the Island” which features indie pop duo “She & Him.” Zooey Deschanel’s voice bought the album to life. The hook is very simple and catchy. “On the Island” is repeated over and over as Deschanel sings over the instrumental.
The song “Half Moon Day,” doesn’t have any lyrics. It is just instrumentals but it sounds wonderful. The album needed more songs like this on it. The mood for the song is very romantic.
It feels like the majority of the songs were written for boy bands such as “One Direction” and old songs that “The Beach Boys” didn’t use for their albums.
Another track that stood out in the album is “Saturday Night” which features indie pop star and member of the band “Fun,” Nate Ruess.
“Saturday Night” has a good chorus and also great song lyrics. This is the only song that could be a radio hit. While it’s not better than “On The Island,” it does feel like the kind of song that radio stations would play.
Even though the tracks “The Beautiful Day,” “On the Island,” “Saturday Night,” and “Guess You Had To Be There,” are very great tracks, it suffers from a lot of horrible and mediocre tracks.
If tracks like “Runaway Dancer,” “Tell Me Why,” and “Sail Away,” were to be left out of the track list, it would make the album easy to listen to.
While the album does suffer from its unusual tracks, it still might please fans because of Wilson’s previous work.
