Beach Boyes-esque: 5 great records with a Beach Boys influence

The Explorers Club - If You Go
Although veering a touch too close to direct pastiche on some tracks, The Explorers Club’s debut album was a broadly successful effort in recreating the feel of early Beach Boys recordings, particularly when broaching the innocence of teenage love in tracks such as ‘Hold Me Tight’, ‘I Lost my Head’ and ‘Forever’. The standout track however is the gorgeous ‘If You Go’, the hushed harmonies and lovely “I thought I heard you call my name’’ ending evoking the spirit of a ‘Please Let Me Wonder’ or ‘She Knows Me Too Well’.




The Pearlfishers - David vs Godzilla
Scottish acts such as Teenage Fanclub and BMX Bandits have never hidden their admiration for Brian Wilson’s work. Although maybe not as well known, Glasgow's The Pearlf'ishers also wear his influence like a badge throughout albums such as 'The Young Picnickers' and 'Across the Milkyway'. ‘David vs Godzilla’ (an outtake from the British release of the former) is an outstanding example of their art, a dreamy backing track and tender lyrics floating across four and half minutes of your life.




Tony Rivers & The Castaways - Summer Dreaming
The Beach Boys’ influence on others was, in some cases, almost instantaneous. British-based Tony Rivers and The Castaways - for whom the influence extended to covering a number of early Beach Boys efforts - never achieved success despite releasing a handful of singles for EMI in the mid 1960's. One of their unreleased tracks was ‘Summer Dreaming’, a tremendous piece of pop worthy of the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean or any of the other acts trying to encapsulate the sound of the time . Rivers went on to sing the theme to 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads' for all you mundane fact fans out there.




Hal - Worry About The Wind
Emerging around the same time as fellow Irish, West Coast Americana obsessives The Thrills, HAL’s eponymous well-received 2004 debut was partly a large nod to the 1970’s and albums such as ‘Sunflower’ and ‘Wild Honey’. The gentle, falsetto-led ‘Worry about the Wind’ was the record’s superb lead single. Despite occasional mentions and promises in interviews since 2004, a second album has never emerged and, as with The Thrills, the band appears to have shuffled into obscurity.




Band of Horses - On My Way Back Home
And finally an effort from Band of Horses that keeps attempting to break into ‘Sloop John B’ but never quite manages it. Nice instrumentation mind.

Random great Everton goals #9

Kevin Sheedy - Everton v Manchester City
Goodison Park, January 13, 1991

The subject of left sided midfielders seemed grimly appropriate, given that an injury to Mikel Arteta on Wednesday night effectively signalled the end of the season, bar the opportunity to possibly bloody the noses of Chelsea and Manchester City in the remaining games. Therefore, here is a goal against the latter, long before they adopted their tramp with a scratchcard persona. Sheedy was by this time coming to the end of a Goodison career that boasted an absurd number of quality strikes and this one - at around 1m55 - coming in an early game of the reign of HKII (note his use of 4-5-1 you two striker nazis..), is right out of the cliched top drawer.

Any More Pi?

Pi
24 Rose Lane, L18 5ED
website

If you ignore the axis of twattery - Yates's, New York etc - at one end, Allerton Road is not a bad place at all for a night out. Schmooze, Penny Lane Wine Bar and The Tavern are all decent places for a beer and mercifully light on the type of arsehole that can make town such a minefield at times. What it has lacked however is a Ship and Mitre-type establishment for those of us for whom the aim is not just intoxication but intoxication via a dizzying array of quality options. Welcome Pi on Rose Lane then, which boasts anywhere between eight and ten draught beers and apparently around sixty global bottled beers.



The other main lovely feature of Pi is that while busy on a weekend evening, it is still relatively undiscovered by the local idiot, thus this Sunday lunchtime the wife and I were able to peruse their free Sunday papers for accounts of Everton's latest vaguely surprising result in the most schizophrenic of seasons pretty much undisturbed. In preparation for two TV matches in the afternoon, I opted for a Blanche de Bruxelles white beer followed by a pint of excellent Brooklyn lager.




Pi offers a range of four different pies to accompany the beer. Being the girly liberal bedwetter I am, I went for a goat's cheese, spinach and sweet potato pie, while Catherine opted the beef and ale pie with carrots and thyme. Both came with mash and we had a jug of slightly watery gravy on the side. Both were more than decent, particularly Catherine's, and were reasonably priced at just over a fiver each.



Nicely full, I got back to lie on the couch to gently doze, while watching Manchester United turn in the kind of gutless, bottle job performance at Anfield that even Everton have barely touched the depths of in recent years.