Grade: B+

By the time the 1970s had come along – post Altamont and post hope – the Beach Boys were tired of being beach boys and thus became, for a while, just another rather mediocre rawk band. The two albums they released in the first three years of the decade, Carl and the Passions – ‘So Tough’ and Holland, dispensed (largely) with those sumptuous harmonies and the simplicity of teenage anthems to God and gave us unconvincing blue-eyed soul and tinny R&B. Of those two albums, only the lovely ‘Marcella’ (where those harmonies come back) and the commendably ludicrous ‘All This is That’are worth shelling out your hard-earned pennies.

But this extravagantly got-up boxed set consisting of six discs including demos, outtakes, an earlier EP and a total of 105 songs, does gladden the heart a little with a couple of hours of stuff from their previously unreleased concert at the Carnegie Hall in 1972. All the hits are there, if introduced a little grudgingly – Carl Wilson explains to the very thankful audience that they are now going to do some ‘old songs’ (cue massed relief around the auditorium) though he admits they’d had difficulty remembering the words. What follows are glorious performances of ‘God Only Knows’, ‘Don’t Worry Baby’, ‘I Get Around’, ‘Good Vibrations’ and all the rest – mainly faithfully delivered, although ‘Do It Again’ is elongated into a gnarled loping boogie, à la 1972, and the band end their set with a cover of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, which one rather wishes they hadn’t. So, a cute Christmas present for someone who is an aficionado, if you care about them enough to splash out £140.

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