Beach Boys to Commemorate 50th Anniversary with New Album

In a recent interview with Billboard, Beach Boys member Mike Love revealed that the band is planning to record a new album to commemorate their 50^th anniversary. While all remaining members are expected to be involved in the recording process, only Love and Brian Wilson have wrote some songs for the group at this time. Love told Billboard: "Where we're at right now is Brian (Wilson)'s written some songs, I've written some songs (and) we're talking very seriously about getting together and co-writing and doing some new music together. He's been doing his own touring, we've been doing ours and so we haven't really been able to lock into that, but it looks like this fall we will. It just makes a lot of sense with a milestone such as 50 years to get together and do something."

The untitled album is expected to hit stores by 2012 and would be the group’s first release since 1996’s country-influenced Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1. Unlike Stars and Stripes, however, the new album, according to Love, would have a traditional Beach Boys’ sound: "It depends on what tempo and what the subject matter is, but I think it's going to sound a lot like what you might have heard from the Beach Boys. The harmonies will be there, and I think there will be a lot of emotion and a lot of people relating to the fact that here's these guys who have been doing this for half a century.”

The new album isn’t the only Beach Boys recording to hit stores this year. Lost album Smile, originally recorded in 1966 after Pet Sounds but scrapped, is being released by Capitol Records as The Smile Sessions. Although no release date is set, The Smile Sessions will be available as a two CD set, a digital album, and as a limited-edition boxed set containing four CDs, two LPs, two vinyl singles, and a 60-page book.