The Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" Capitol Records ? T 2458 UK Mono 1st press 1966 1/1

	£		24
	$		32

The Beach Boys ? "Pet Sounds"  Capitol Records ? T 2458 UK 1st Pressing
Mono Vinyl, LP,released in 1966.
The vinyl does have several scuff marks, which can cause a slight crackle between tracks, but which don't interfere with the music. The LP plays all the way through without any hop, stick or jump on my stereo. A previous owner has recorded her name on the label and to the back of the sleeve, which has otherwise survived the last 50 years pretty well. The spine is intact and completely legible. Matrix / Runout (Variant 1, Side A): T1 2458-1 PO Matrix / Runout (Variant 1, Side B): T2 2458-1 OL
"Pet Sounds" is the Beach Boys' eleventh studio album, released on May 16, 1966. It initially met with a lukewarm critical and commercial response in the United States, peaking at number 10 in the Billboard 200, a significantly lower placement than the band's preceding albums. In the United Kingdom, the album was hailed by its music press and was an immediate commercial success, peaking at number 2 in the UK Top 40 Albums Chart and remaining among the top ten positions for six months. "Pet Sounds" has subsequently gathered worldwide acclaim from critics and musicians alike, and is widely considered to be one of the most influential albums in music history.
The album was produced and arranged by Brian Wilson, who also wrote and composed almost all of its music. Most of the recording sessions were conducted between January and April 1966, a year after he had quit touring with the Beach Boys in order to focus more attention on writing and recording. For "Pet Sounds", Wilson's goal was to create "the greatest rock album ever made" — a personalized work with no filler tracks. It is sometimes considered a Wilson solo album, repeating the themes and ideas he had introduced with "The Beach Boys Today!" one year earlier. The album's lead single, "Caroline, No", was issued as his official solo debut. It was followed by two singles credited to the group: "Wouldn't It Be Nice" (backed with "God Only Knows") and "Sloop John B". 
 According to author Johnny Morgan, a "process of re-evaluation" of "Pet Sounds" was underway from the late 1960s onward, with a 1976 NME feature proving especially influential. In his 1969 Pop Chronicles series, John Gilliland stated that the album was almost overshadowed by the Beatles' "Revolver", released two months later, and that "a lot people failed to realize that Brian Wilson's production was as unique in its own way as the Beatles'". Noel Murray of The A.V. Club, writing in 2014, theorized that the success of "Good Vibrations" helped turn around the perception of "Pet Sounds", in that the album's "un-hip orchestrations and pervasive sadness baffled some longtime fans, who didn't immediately get what Wilson was trying to do."
In a 1972 review for Rolling Stone, Stephen Davis called "Pet Sounds" "by far" Brian Wilson's best album and said that its "trenchant cycle of love songs has the emotional impact of a shatteringly evocative novel". Writing in the first edition of The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1979), Dave Marsh gave the album four stars (out of a possible five) and described it as a "powerful, but spotty" collection on which the least experimental songs proved to be the best. Five years later, he wrote that the album was now considered a "classic", elaborating: ""Pet Sounds" wasn't a commercial flop, but it did signal that the group was losing contact with its listeners (a charge that could not be levelled against the Beatles during the same period)".
In "Music USA: The Rough Guide", Richie Unterberger and Samb Hicks deem the album to be a "quantum leap" from the Beach Boys' earlier material, and "the most gorgeous arrangements ever to grace a rock record". The New York Observer's D. Strauss says that the album's quality and subversion of rock traditions is "what created its special place in rock history; there was no category for its fans to place it in". Author Luis Sanchez views the album as "the score to a film about what rock music doesn't have to be. For all of its inward-looking sentimentalism, it lays out in a masterful way the kind of glow and sui generis vision that Brian aimed to [later] expand."
In the book "101 Albums that Changed Popular Music" (2009), "Pet Sounds" is evaluated as "one of the most innovative recordings in rock"; that it "elevated Brian Wilson from talented bandleader to studio genius". Dominique Leone wrote a 9.4 review of its 40th Anniversary edition for Pitchfork Media stating: "Certainly, regardless of what I write here, the impact and 'influence' of the record will have been in turn hardly influenced at all. I can't even get my dad to talk about "Pet Sounds" anymore. ... The hymnal aspect of many of these songs seems no less pronounced, and the general air of deeply heartfelt love, graciousness and the uncertainty that any of it will be returned are still affecting to the point of distraction."  Music journalist Robert Christgau felt that "Pet Sounds" was a good record, but believed it had become looked upon as a totem. Composer Atticus Ross explains that the album has "an element of cliche that's grown around it". He references a sketch from the television show Portlandia in which "your classic hipster musicians ... are building a studio and everything is like 'this is the mike they used in "Pet Sounds".' This is exactly the same as "Pet Sounds".'" Commentator C.W. Maloney mused: "The songs on "Pet Sounds" are great, but you have to wonder, given all the hype and mythology and our love of shallow nostalgia, what we mean when we call it a classic or Wilson a genius. Consider what [Frank] Zappa was doing in 1966, to say nothing of Miles [Davis]. Wilson's high reputation is evidence of our obsession with childlike innocence and the victory of boring poptimism."
By the 1990s, three British critics' polls featured "Pet Sounds" at or near the top of their lists. Those who have deemed it "the greatest album of all time" include NME, The Times, and Uncut. In 1998, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences inducted the album into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, "Pet Sounds" was preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." As of 2006, more than 100 domestic and international publications and journalists have lauded "Pet Sounds" as one of the greatest albums ever recorded. In 2015, Acclaimed Music, which statistically aggregates hundreds of published lists, ranked "Pet Sounds" as the most acclaimed album of all-time.