Wilson Phillips

We have gathered here to celebrate California. California music, to be more exact. The songs of the girls on the beach, the girls in convertibles, whipping down Pacific Coast Highway; the young girls coming to the canyon; the girls of myth, a myth that radio wrought, and everyone bought.

We think every song here is a piece of the bigger story. There's Brian Wilson in an early moment of isolated introspection, and at his most ebullient. There's John Phillips achieving a divine, quintessential pop moment. Linda Ronstadt taking a Betty Everett r&b song and becoming the west coast's primary interpretive voice. Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and the Eagles and the effenization of the '70s.

Fleetwood Mac's marvelously disfunctional cross-continental update of the Beach Boys/Mama's and Papa's pop esthetic. And who could be unmoved by the esonance of these particular young women singing Neil Young's 'Old Man'? There are also a couple of --- what should we call them? 'anthems'? 'generational themes'? 'Let's Get Together' and 'Turn, Turn, Turn' are '60s standards, of course, as iconic as the peace sign. The first was passed along from the Bay Area's Kingston Trio and L.A.'s We Five, to San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane, to Marin County's (by way of NY) Youngbloods; and Pete Seeger's biblical adaptation was the Byrds' biggest hit single and a folk-rock touchstone.

'Farewell to the First Golden Era' was the title of a Mama's and Papa's retrospective, and it could have been the name of this album as well. Or, since Brian Wilson never quite got around to it, it could have been called 'Smile.'

Listening to these three harmonically gifted California girls sing the Great Western-American Songbook (Volume One, we hope) is a joyful experience. They've taken the sound and the spirit of a place and a time, and made it all their own. It's as though they grew up in it. Imagine that.

- Mitchell Cohen

March 2004