REVIEW: Eternal Sunshine For The Spotless Mind

 

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER If the Dallas Cowboys are America’s team, then the Beach Boys — who are marking 50 years of fun, fun, fun with a new album and a tour that brought them to the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden on Saturday — are America’s band. Granted, they have been more or less a movable oldies jukebox for the last 30 years, at least, but that does not diminish the deathlessness of their songbook or erase the fact that they have provided the aspirational soundtrack for American life, the grand illusion of an eternal summer of sun, surf, hot rods, bikinis, and burger joints. Though the surviving members — Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and prodigal charter member David Marks — are now septuagenarians, or close to it, they still have a lot of gas in the tank as a live band. Abetted by a nine-piece band, the Beach Boys are still able to re-create the sun-kissed magic of those recordings, if not all the high octaves, and their majestic harmonies sound none the worse for wear after five turbulent decades. MORE