Review Summary: The Beach Boys go off the deep end
Summer in Paradise is something that I like to call a gaffe album. A record which I personally see to be a slip On the creator's part. In Layman's terms, a big ***ing mistake.
Holy hell, what went wrong here? Is it the lack of Brian Wilson? The dated, cheesy production, the lacklustre lyrics? The John Stamos feature? The MIKE LOVE RAP?? Or could it be all of them. Summer in Paradise is what happens when you give a man obsessed with nostalgia and image a beta version of pro-tools and enough money to craft whatever monstrosity he wants. From the mind of Mike Love and Terry Meltcher comes Summer In Paradise, once the last official Beach Boys album in almost 20 years and a truly sad end to Carl Wilson's career (and no Stars and Stripes Vol. 1 doesn't count).
This album is riddled with many faults. The most glaring two being the lack of any Brian Wilson (though maybe that's a blessing in disguise) and the incredibly dated production. While it worked fine on BB85, this record was released in mid 1992. The electronic drum machine sound was fast on its way out as the vice of grunge was taking hold of America. Even at release, this album was already 10 years out of style. The whole album is coated in it. It's got everything. Cheesy keys, aggressively loud drums, that dry yacht rock sound that you hear played at every cocktail bar on earth. It's all over the place and this album has no shame in hiding it. The very first thing you hear on this album is a huge staticky drum crash. Get used to it, it's all you're gonna be hearing for the next 45 minutes.
The songs are also a major problem. Mike and Terry envisioned this heaping turd to be "the quintessential soundtrack of summer". That's right folks, the definitive summer record. They thought this *** was gonna be looked upon as the best feel good album of the 90s. It also means this is technically Mike Love's magnum opus, and therefore, his own Pet Sounds. Let's take this thing apart. First off, none of the boys play on the album, bar Bruce who cracks out the cheesy midi keyboards for his sole song on the record, the disgracefully syrupy 'Slow Summer Dancin' (One Summer Night)' which sounds like it should be playing over the credits of a Lifetime original movie instead of a rock album. I should note that the song is esssitnally a medley of Bruce's Slow Summer Dancin' and a cover of The Danleer's 'One Summer Night' which results in a Frankenstein's monster of a song. This isn't the only cover song on record though. Oh no, there's 6 instead. Usually I wouldn't be so bothered but two of them are Beach Boys songs anyway, just rerecorded in the album's sickly electronic sound. Ironically; two of the covers prove to be some of the record's fleeting few decent moments (those being a cover of Sly and The Family Stone's 'Hot Fun In The Summertime' and The Shangri-La's 'Walkin' In The Sand'). The other cover is off the classic soul song 'Under The Boardwalk', now giving an 80s gloss of paint and new lyrics about summer or some *** I don't f ucking know.
The remaining tracks are all brand new Originals, penned by Mike and Terry. They're all about fun fun fun in the sun sun sun and 80% of them suck harder than a hooker With swollen lips. The songs range from boring trite like with the soul destroying 'Island Fever', cheesy nostalgia bait like on the title track which features several references to older, much better Beach Boys songs and a feature by Roger McGuinn of all people, to tacky and dated, with the previously mentioned Slow Summer Dancin'. But that's not all folks because this record has the top three trifecta of possibly the worst beach boys songs set to tape. First off we have the cover of the group's first single 'Surfin'' now layered with booming drums and synthesisers. It's pretty ***ing horrific. There's the cover of their 1970 song 'Forever', originally penned and sung by Dennis Wilson, now featuring John Stamos on lead vocal. Yep. Uncle Jesse sings on beach boys record. The thing is, John isn't a bad singer, it's more the fact they took one of the harmonically lush love songs of all time, slapped some cheap drums and RADICAL electric guitar on it and recruited Uncle Jesse to sing lead. It's the ultimate slap in the face to Dennis and his legacy. But that isn't even the best part of this record. Oh no no that honor goes to Track 3 'Summer Of Love'. If you ever wanted to hear Mike Love rap in a sleazy tone about tanned bodies on the beach and cruising for women then this is the album for you. It's so tacky, surreal, poorly contrived and just plain bad that it loops back round and becomes awesome. It's like having your drunk uncle start rapping at your wedding. It's horrible, embarrassing, cringy. But you can't look away, it just keeps getting worse. And then eventually you just start to laugh.
Are there any good moments on this beast of an LP. Surprisingly there are. Four. But even then they're held back by the horrible instrumentation and production. 'Hot Fun In The Summertime' and 'Walkin' In The Sand' may be nothing compared to the originals but they're listenable and the originals 'Laihana Aloha' which has a actually really lovely chorus from Carl and the surprisingly psychedelic sounding 'Strange Things Happen' both provide some relief in this Sea of ***.
all in all, Summer In Paradise is awful. It's worse than that. It's god awful. Bar 2 ok covers and 2 surprisingly solid originals, Summer In Paradise has nothing going for it. The production is garbage and dated, the new songs have cheesy, nostalgia baiting lyrics and to put the cherry on top of the sundae, there's two rancid covers of classic beach boys songs and a mike Love rap track. I like to think maybe this was all one ironic joke and Mike and Terry were trying to satirise the band's nostalgia driven imagine. None of us got the memo however and it backfired spectacularly. It flopped so hard it only sold only 1000 copies and bankrupt its publisher. Yep. You want a copy (not that you'd want to) you gotta shill out up to $75+ on one because this monster is out of print.
And maybe it's better off that way
Standout tracks
Hot Fun In The Summertime
Summer of Love
Laihana Aloha
Strange Things Happen
Standout lyrics:
'Hey now, well it's a love thang' - Summer Of Love
'Way back when well our master plan
Was havin' fun fun fun as America's band
Well we came out rockin' with Rhonda and Barbara Ann' - Summer In Paradise
That's it
God damn
