The early ‘60s weren’t as bereft of rock ‘n’ roll as critics often say. In the same month that the Beach Boys began impressing the rest of the country with California’s surf and sun, the Four Seasons started spreading their distinctly New Jersey tough ‘n’ tender harmonizing.
From the post-doo-wop of their first few hits to credible forays into soul and psychedelia, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were as consistent as any U.S. act competing against the first waves of the British invasion. If the group’s artistic success in taking up changing fashions in a tumultuous decade isn’t widely respected nowadays, the 3-CD/1-DVD Jersey Beat (titled to capitalize on the hit Broadway musical based on the band’s history, Jersey Boys) should remedy that perception.
Although Valli’s stratospheric falsetto immediately set the group apart, that wasn’t their only otherworldly element. Somewhere between Phil Spector’s lushness and Joe Meek’s lunacy, the Seasons’ producers crafted punchy, vaguely surreal arrangements that matched the era’s hopefulness and trepidation. And though gearing their artistry to the hippie generation didn’t quite pay off commercially, those gambits flowed from a consistent, ambitious aesthetic.
Disco gave the group, and Valli as a soloist, a second wind on the upper reaches of the pop charts. Even as Valli plied his emotional depth to drivel such as the theme to Grease, a sincerity of style and form prevailed. A majority of the 70-plus cuts in this collection bear out that same impression.
