Pacific Ocean Blue and Bambu

Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who actually surfed, but as their occasional drummer (better players replaced him on the albums) didn’t do much more than look ruggedly handsome on stage until the late ’60s, when he started writing sad and beautiful songs for the Boys’ albums. In 1977, six years before he drunkenly drowned in its namesake waters, Wilson released Pacific Ocean Blue, a moody, groovy, and immensely appealing solo album. Dennis had his brother Brian’s gift for plaintive melody—not to mention unresolved psychological issues—but his ravaged vocals, plangent piano, and multitrack (and multi-intoxicant) production values provide a more desperate and searching take on SoCal song. Wilson partied hard and loved the ladies, and his best tunes—like the opening “River Song,” a sublime hybrid of pastoral mope, gospel glory, and bearded funk—are infused with the charm of the melancholy reprobate. The earthier Bambu, an unreleased follow-up album named after a brand of rolling papers, regularly rises to the Malibu heights of the first record.