M.I.U. Album - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

Although the album peaked at only #151 in the US, and became their first since 1964 to miss the UK chart completely, "Come Go With Me" would become a top 20 hit in late 1981 when it was released as a single from the Ten Years of Harmony compilation.

The album received generally negative reviews. Upon its initial release, Rolling Stone stated, "M.I.U. Album seems contrived and artificial right from the start. The tracks strive to recapture the dreamy, adolescent innocence of the Beach Boys' earliest hits, and fail not so much because the concepts are dated but because the group can't infuse the new material with the same sense of grandeur that made the old songs such archetypal triumphs. Throughout, the lackluster playing and singing has a melancholy edge, almost as if the Beach Boys are fully aware that they've outgrown this kind of teen fantasy, but can't think of anyplace else to go."

Paired with L.A. (Light Album), M.I.U. Album was reissued on CD in 2002. Upon the album's re-release, The A.V. Club stated, "M.I.U. is competent enough, but it's also the sound of a group buying into its own mythology, a retrograde salute to the pinstripes and sunshine image it had abandoned years before." AllMusic issued a more negative review, stating, "The mainstream late-'70s production techniques are predictable and frequently cloying. M.I.U. Album also included several of the worst Beach Boys songs ever to make it to vinyl. Compared with what had come before, M.I.U. Album was a pathetic attempt at music making; compared with what was to come however, this was a highlight."