Pet Sounds

I was watching a documentary on the making of Pet Sounds, the era-defining album by The Beach Boys.

If there’s ever been a bigger mismatch between sound and sight than Pet Sounds and its album cover, I’ve yet to see it. Here we have Brian Wilson, crafting one of the most sublime, emotionally layered works in popular music – a cathedral of harmony and heartbreak – while the record company sends the lads off to a petting zoo to feed goats. Goats. As if someone at Capitol Records took the title literally and decided the theme should be “suburban family day out.”

The result looks like a promotional leaflet for the Los Angeles Parks Department circa 1965. Five wholesome American boys in sports jackets, awkwardly smiling as they dangle handfuls of hay at livestock who, frankly, seem as unimpressed as the band. One imagines Brian muttering, “I’m writing symphonies to God,” while a handler shouts, “Mind the goat, Carl!”

It’s almost performance art in unintentional irony. While the music reinvented what pop could be – emotional depth, dissonant beauty, orchestral ambition – the cover screams “junior school field trip.” You can hear “God Only Knows,” “Caroline, No,” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” but you see damp hay, muddy shoes, and Al Jardine wondering whether he’s about to be bitten.

And yet, in a perverse way, it’s perfect. Because it shows exactly how misunderstood Brian Wilson was. While he was hearing choirs of angels, the record execs were hearing… farmyard ambience. It’s like handing Da Vinci a tin of emulsion and saying, “Knock us up a quick mural, mate.”

Still, it does have a certain charm. There’s an innocence about it – a kind of accidental visual metaphor for the chasm between genius and the machinery that markets it. One of the greatest albums of all time, dressed up like an advert for goat feed. Proof, if ever you needed it, that art departments should never be allowed to name or theme albums. Otherwise you end up with Abbey Road featuring Paul McCartney at the till of a Tesco Express.