Dennis Wilson: “River Song”

I’m in LA this week visiting friends and soaking up the beautiful Southern California sunshine, which means my personal soundtrack has shifted accordingly. Even though I rarely buy CDs anymore, I decided to pay a visit to Amoeba Records in Hollywood (mainly because I used to live a few blocks from their San Francisco store and I have a nostalgic attachment to the place) and finally pick up the reissue of Dennis Wilson’s “Pacific Ocean Blue.”

The album opener, “River Song,” floored me. I’ve listened to it probably at least 100 times today. The production is bright and clear as the Southern California sun, the wall of sound background vocals are wonderfully immersive, and I love how the lovely opening piano line gives way to a surprisingly hip shaking groove that, in retrospect, is exactly what you’d expect from a song written by a drummer. What really clinches it for me, though, is the song’s earnest, soulful lyric—a meditation on the glory of nature and a lament for smoggy Los Angeles (“you can only see a block or two in LA, that’s for true”). I love the fact that he actually says the city’s ugliness makes him “want to cry.”