Though Brian Wilson was an increasingly absent presence following 1967’s abandoned Smile, the albums The Beach Boys made in the late 60s and early 70s provide a treasure trove of stunningly beautiful music. 1972’s Surf’s Up might just be the best of the bunch. A sumptuous record loosely themed around environmental concerns, it showed Wilson’s bandmates had grown into seriously gifted songwriters in his absence. Carl Wilson’s wonderfully dreamy “Feel Flows” and Bruce Johnston’s pillow-soft paean to his 50s childhood “Disney Girls (1957)” are the equal of many of the band’s 60s hits, while the trio of songs Brian contributed that send the album home – “A Day In The Life Of A Tree”, “‘Til I Die” and the title track; the glistening centrepiece of Smile rescued and finished by the rest of the group - are everlasting, if heartbreaking, proof of the towering genius that was sinking beneath the waves. Only Mike Love’s jarring “Student Demonstration Time” (a vaguely anti- anti-war protest rewrite of Leiber and Stoller’s “Riot In Cell Block Number 9”) spoils the mood.