FRIENDS
| The Beach Boys
FRIENDS
Friends is the 14th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on June 24, 1968 through Capitol Records. The album is characterized for its calm and peaceful atmosphere, which contrasted the prevailing music trends of the time, and for its brevity, with five of its 12 tracks running less than two minutes long. It sold poorly, peaking at number 126 on the US Billboard charts, the group's lowest US chart performance to date, although it reached number 13 in the UK. Fans generally came to regard the album as one of the band's finest. - WIKIPEDIA
Critic Reviews
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RollingStone
1968 - Listen once and you might think this album is nowhere. But it’s really just at a very special place, and after a half-dozen listenings, you can be there.
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Ultimate Classic Rock
2013 - The album still holds a special place for many Beach Boys fans. After a period of disharmony, the group came together on the record.
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sputnik music
2013 - A sweet album, focusing more on blissful relaxation than the excited melodrama of the past.
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ALL MUSIC
Today it sounds better, but it's certainly one of the group's more minor efforts, as the members started to divide the songwriting more or less evenly among themselves, rather than letting Brian Wilson provide most of the material.
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Classic Rock Review
Let us not forget Friends is not a masterpiece – too short, too much filler for such a short album, and, well, hey, it’s no Pet Sounds, you know, as banal as it sounds.
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blogcritics
is more listenable than interesting.
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Adrian Denning
For a very humble release, this really does have a certain magic surrounding it.
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Mark Prindle
This is NOT peaceful music - it's corruption and schizophrenia masquerading as peaceful music.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
An improvement in some ways, but Brian had lost control of the band, and the other Beach Boys had little of his musical sense.
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Don Ignacio
Compared to Wild Honey, this album has a much more laid-back and easily palatable quality that I completely adore.
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Aphoristic Album Reviews
Friends does have continuity and a quaint charm to recommend it, but it’s largely unsatisfying; the product of one of pop music’s most talented figures unwilling or unable to challenge himself any further and settling down into a predictable routine.
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