CONCERT REVIEW: Beach Boys @ Susquehanna 6/16

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CONCERT REVIEW: Beach Boys @ Susquehanna 6/16

POSTED: Wednesday, June 20, 2012, 12:00 PM

Filed Under: Music Concert Review

“An uneasy truce” may have been the initial headline when the long estranged membership of the Beach Boys (Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine) buried the hatchet of ego and royalties to celebrate 50 years of sunsets — real, fictional, sensual and sad. In reality, once onstage at Camden’s Susquehanna Center on Saturday with 11 other sonically seafaring stalwarts (including Bruce Johnston who joined in 1965 when Wilson stopped touring, David Marks who was a 13-year-old Boy) all animosities amongst the original members seemed to fade into the waves during their long (47 songs?), solidly played set list.

They weren’t always perfect within the wall-of-barbershop-harmonic sound. Love couldn’t hit all the highs of his past and the game-changing “Good Vibrations” fell short of its historic psychedelic mark. Then again, that’s why God gave us ringers like the cats that Wilson’s used for his Pet Sounds/Smile re-enactment ensembles. They filled in most of the highs, dotted the I’s and nobly sang a few leads. Love also, at times, seemed as creakily wooden as most people assumed Wilson would be with his weirdly moving hands and insistent sales pitching for their new album. Wilson, the legendarily damaged composer/introspective Boy genius seemed present, though distanced, throughout the two sets. His chatty baritone voice was stilted but warm during the plaintive blue-eyed-soul of “Sail on Sailor,” the clunky “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Time” and his parts of the complexly rendered “Heroes and Villains,” the heartbreaking “In My Room,” “Sloop John B,” and a devastating take on “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

Wilson’s best moment though was when he looked across at Love and Jardine from his piano’s perch during the winsomely chipper “Kiss Me, Baby.” Focused and beaming, he smiled at his cousin and his Boy-hood friend as they sung their licks through one of Wilson’s lesser-known but equally buoyant classics. I got chills.

Make no mistake though, for all of Love’s downsides, his was the voice of summer’s hissing lawns and shifting sands, then and now. Though Jardine (honestly he looks like Klaus Kinski) snapped through the toe-tapping “Help Me, Rhonda,” and “Forever” and “God Only Knows” featured the late likes of Dennis and Carl Wilson’s vocals on video), it was Love that ably essayed the sun-dappled whomp-bang-boom of every beach, bomp, surf and car song Wilson ever penned. “When I Grow Up to Be a Man,” “Catch a Wave,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Shut Down” — all the sweetest swiftest hits bounced along with Love’s clipped soprano at their front. Love’s transcendental mediation song with Jardine, the choppy “All This Is That” was a delicious curio. Even recent songs like the title song to their new album, That’s Why God Made the Radio, had heart and guts. I’m not so certain that every band around for one decade let alone five could say as much.

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