The most handsome Beach Boy was also, in 1977, the most daring. Dennis Wilsons only official solo album, Pacific Summer Blue, was the first by any member of the group, and is still the best:
12 songs of gripping need and tortured beauty, sung in a craggy, soulful voice by a surfer dreamboat for whom the California dream was real, but not enough. Pacific Ocean Blue is Dennis version of his brother Brians triumph, Pet Sounds an intensely personal masterpiece while the session material from Dennis planned second album, Bambu, is his version of Brians SMiLE: a promise aborted and, with his death in 1983, forever unfulfilled.
Check out the rest of David Frickes list of the top reissues of the year, including U2s early albums, Nina Simone and Hank Williams:
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