Well, I think you’re completely wrong, VCO3, but how can I argue aesthetics? All I can relate to you is my own experience with that record. I heard it many times growing up, and never saw what the big deal was. Sure, it was nice record, melodic, experimental, but it really didn’t seem anything that extraordinary.
Then, one day after being away from the record for a number of years, I picked up the version with the mono and stereo mixes on it. I carefully read the liner notes and popped the CD in the player. For whatever reason, it was as if I was hearing it for the first time. Everything sounded so new, so fresh, so genius to me. It was one of the few purely sublime moments I’ve ever had with music. How the genius of this record was suddenly revealed to me, I don’t know, but there’s no doubt in my mind that this is one of the greatest records ever recorded.
I know it doesn’t help you appreciate it any more, but the album is full of exciting subtleties and amazing sound textures (!) Instruments blend with each other to create new timbres that are greater than the sum of their parts. The way Brian Wilson uses texture, dynamics, and instrumental voicings on that album is nothing short of incredible.
And I don’t know what you find boring about it. There’s not a single boring point on that album. Not one. And I can’t think of any one song from that album, without thinking of the record in its entirey–it truly is an Album in every sense of the word.
So, ever since my revelatory moment, I can’t believe that I ever thought Pet Sounds was just an okay pop record. Every time I hear it now, the genius behind it seems so blindingly obvious to me that I cannot imagine ever not hearing it.
Maybe it’s a record that you need to put away for a few years and get back to. Maybe you just need to turn off the lights and really listen into the music. It is a very sonically dense album, and benefits most from listening to it as you would an orchestra–with strict attention to individual melodies and counterpoints, as well as taking in the whole.
I don’t know what kind of music you listen to, VCO3, but I’d put Pet Sounds up there with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless as best albums of all time. And I like them for similar reasons: their experimentation, and rich, thick, subtle sonic landscapes. Both albums give me the goosebumps.