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Product Description ------------------- What a deal this is: two key Beach Boys albums on 2 CDs for the price of one! Sunflower (1970) marked a strong return to their mid-'60s form, with the rich harmonies of their hit Add Some Music to Your Day plus Cool, Cool Water and This Whole World. The eclectic, often-haunting Surf's Up (1971) includes the hit Long Promised Road plus the compelling title track and 'Til I Die. .com ---- After an acrimonious split with their original record label at the end of the 1960s, the Beach Boys moved over to Warner Bros., ostensibly to capitalize on their phenomenal early successes. But the move also coincided with band founder/creative genius Brian Wilson's burgeoning problems and subsequent artistic abdication. That the boys were able to come up with what remain two of their more interesting albums is an enduring testament to the band's willpower. Sunflower, originally released in 1970, was a drastically revamped version of an unreleased album called Landlocked, and has an upbeat consistency that both built on the band's vocal strengths and somehow overcame schmaltzy pop and even the embarrassing, halting espanole of "At My Window." Perhaps the album's greatest revelation is the brief flowering of Dennis Wilson as a writing and singing talent, especially on the lovely "Forever." With Dennis largely succumbing to older brother Brian's demons, '71's Surf's Up is marred by cloddish efforts at agit-prop hipsterism (Mike Love's "Student Demonstration Time") and a nascent environmentalism that ranges from the naïve ("Don't Go Near the Water") to the bizarre ("A Day in the Life of a Tree"). Carl Wilson rescues the collection somewhat with "Long Promised Road" and "Feel Flows," but the album's twin jewels are both salvaged Brian Wilson efforts--the title track was one of the centerpieces of the unreleased Smile (cowritten by lyricist Van Dyke Parks and here given that album's "Child Is her to the Man" as a glorious coda), while "Til I Die" hails from the scrapped Landlocked and remains one of Brian's most hauntingly introspective works. Both albums have been remastered on a single disc and include new liner notes by Wilson biographer Timothy White. --Jerry McCulley