Reissues of the Year

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Dennis Wilson PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE Epic/Caribou/Legacy

The most handsome Beach Boy was also, in 1977, the most daring. Dennis Wilson's only official solo album was the first by any member of the group, and is still the best: 12 songs of gripping need and tortured beauty, sung in a craggy, soulful voice by a surfer dreamboat for whom the California dream was real, but not enough. Pacific Ocean Blue is Dennis' version of his brother Brian's triumph, Pet Sounds — an intensely personal masterpiece — while the session material from Dennis' planned second album, Bambu, is his version of Brian's SMiLE: a promise aborted and, with his death in 1983, forever unfulfilled.

• View List: 2008 Reissues of the Year