I did a Mike Love solo discography listen a while back (complete it for every individual Beach Boys except David Marks where you can’t even listen to some of his solo album pirated) when this album wasn’t released yet. I now realised that Mike Love has a solo album released since then that i haven’t heard yet

Mike Love Not War is probably Mike Love best solo album. it’s his solo album least marred bu dodgy production choice and least embarrassing to listen to. you can kinda listen to it and think this sounds like real rock instruments without 80’s and 90’s production touch.

there are no good song in the albums but an improvement is that there are some average/mediocre songs

the early upbeat songs for the first 3 songs were the most listenable with some gospel call and response and some decent guitar lead. there are some call backto Beach boys harmony in track 4.

The album dips with some adult contempory slops from track 5-7 which prevent me from rating this album anything higher than “below average”

However what’s interesting is that Mike Love throw a curve ball with “Ram Raj” in track 7. This is Mike Love do eastern mysticism psychedelia with the Indian drone music, meditative Indian chant and some backward guitar playing (although with some modern new age touch productopm). This is what i meant by the opening post that Mike Love with his transcendental meditation interest does have some overlap with psychedelia

I can’t say it’s a good song as it’s bit too monotonous and overlong but it certainly Mike Love most interesting songin his solo career

7/15 (or Hex 5). career highlight of Mike Love solo career and a surprised that the album is only a below average album instead of just plain bad