Nearly Unanimous 5 Star Reviews For Brian Wilson's "SMiLE" - Out Today!

[Trauma-san]

Man, he finally did it!  Brian finished "SMiLE", the most famous "lost" album of all time, re-recorded it, and it's in stores TODAY around the world.  Reviews & Articles are pouring in, and nearly without exception, it's being applauded as the masterwork of a genius; beautiful, haunting, and nothing short of what Brian called in 1967 "A Teenage Symphony To God"

I'll post a bunch of reviews, do yourself a favor and BUY THIS ALBUM!  It's currently sitting @ #1 on Amazon.com, here's hoping Brian does well with what he spent his entire life trying to perfect.

Hear it for free, here : www.smilethealbum.com

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Rolling Stone Magazine - 5 out of 5 stars

Never mind Pet Sounds. Good record, but a totem. That leaves three great Beach Boys albums. First comes a fun-fun-fun best-of: With the canonical Endless Summer deleted, settle for 2003's longer, less pristine Sounds of Summer. The other two are quickies that fit neatly on one must-own CD: Buy Smiley Smile/Wild Honey while EMI lets you.

Smiley Smile and Wild Honey get respect now, but in 1967 they peeved hard-core Pet Sounds fans, who were waiting gape-mouthed for Smile, described by those in the know as the American Sgt. Pepper -- proof that our Bea-boys belonged in the same league as their Bea-boys. But Brian went bonkers, Mike Love got busy, and we ended up with only "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" -- stopgap singles that made it onto the belittlingly titled Smiley Smile -- and dribs and drabs thereafter.

Only you know what happened? Brian Wilson survived his saner brothers and rebuilt his career, which the completely rerecorded SMiLE is supposed to crown. Since much of Wilson's 2004 Gettin' In Over My Head could have been sung from a crypt, this seemed like a terrible idea. Instead, it's a triumph.

SMiLE began as a concert concept for Wilson's expert alt- rock road band, which by 2002 had exhausted Pet Sounds. Never completed, SMile existed only as a jumble of alternate versions, song fragments and ill-cataloged tapes. Sifting through these was a collaborator as crucial as lyricist Van Dyke Parks: keyboard player, harmony vocalist and "musical secretary" Darian Sahanaja. With Sahanaja and Parks jogging his memory, Wilson revised and composed until the best pieces formed a forty-seven-minute whole that started shortly before "Heroes and Villains" and climaxed with "Good Vibrations." While no symphony, it cohered and flowed. The sparer, simpler recorded version follows the pattern of the ecstatically reviewed live performances. Anchored by deft quotes and thematic repetitions, SMiLE is beautiful and funny, goofily grand. It's looser and messier than Sgt. Pepper and, one suspects, always would have been. But its sui generis Americanism counterbalances its paucity of classic pop songs. Not in the same league -- just ready to play a World Series.

Although Parks is a well-traveled arranger who must have left some marks on Wilson's music during their hash-fueled 1966-67 brainstorming sessions, his words do the talking. They're poetic in a manner Wilson has no gift for: now idiomatic, now archaic, now obscure, pervaded by images of fleeting youth and a frontier that stretches to Hawaii. Although stoned confusion and mild pastoral pessimism are endemic, the world they evoke is as benign as a day at the beach - yet less simplistic (and deceptive) than the Beach Boys' fantasies of eternal Southern California teendom. In this the lyrics are of a piece with the jokey songlets of Smiley Smile, where five SmiLE titles first surfaced, and the good-natured rock & roll recidivism of Wild Honey. What elevates them into something approaching a utopian vision is Wilson's orchestrations: brief bridge melodies, youthful harmonies more precise and uplifting now than when executed by actually existing callow people and an enthralling profusion of instrumental colors. Trombone, timpani, theremin and tenor sax brush by and disappear; a banjo shows its head; strings vibe around; woodwinds establish unexpected moods and pipe down.

That the pros who surround Wilson are up to all of this is gratifying but not startling. What the auteur himself had in him was more questionable. And that's the central miracle of this gift of music. Wilson's voice has deepened and coarsened irreparably. Although he hits the notes, he can't convey the innocence SMiLE's content seems to demand. But he can convey commitment and belief -- belief that his young bonkers self composed a work that captured possibilities now nearly lost to history. SMiLE proves that those possibilities are still worth pursuing.

ROBERT CHRISTGAU
(Posted Oct 14, 2004)

[Trauma-san]

The London Times: 5 out of 5 stars!



Over the past 37 years, the Beach Boys’ Smile has become sanctified as rock’s great lost album, the record that — had it been released — would have irreversibly stretched the parameters of contemporary music. As any bookish fan will tell you, here was Brian Wilson’s masterpiece: an odyssey that took in generous tracts of American history, nursery songs, animal noises, woodworking tools, a few good jokes and some of the most epochally lovely tunes yet composed.

The reasons why the Beach Boys never released Smile are manifold, and generally hinge on Wilson’s disintegrating mental state at the time. As the countless bootleg versions of the album have illustrated, though, the overriding problem was more prosaic. Confronted with a clutch of transcendent tunes and dozens of equally good fragments, Wilson clearly couldn’t work out how to fit them all together. The fecundity of his genius had defeated him.

Smile, then, is less rock’s great lost album, more its great unfinished one. Revisiting those songs this year, Wilson and his collaborators finally designed the structure into which all these saturated melodies can fit.

Had Smile appeared in 1967, as planned, it would not have sounded like this. The re-recorded 2004 version is less hazy and more thrusting. The ethereal harmonies of the young Beach Boys have been replaced with heartier vocals, and it’s a pity that some of the original sessions weren’t salvaged and digitally redeployed.

But enough cavils. The 2004 Smile is still an astonishing achievement. Arranged into three movements, it hurtles from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii via Old West cantinas, compressing America’s history, geography and musical traditions into vivid, transporting sound pictures. The ambition of the project remains breathtaking, and the discipline evidently required to edit so many ideas into a coherent 47 minutes is one of its most impressive features.

And at its best — the second movement that encompasses Wonderful, Song for Children, Child Is Father of the Man and Surf’s Up — the exalted myth of Smile seems to have been realised fully. It is here that Wilson’s “teenage symphony to God” is at its most emotionally striking, as his cracked, seasoned voice addresses the innocence of youth, and the struggle to retain that innocence into maturity.

When he first sang these words in his twenties, they were poignant enough. Now, after nearly four decades of volatile psychological health, they sound immeasurably moving. The 2004 Smile may lack the hallucinogenic, revolutionary dimension it once promised. But its epic gestation has, if anything, only increased the profundity of this, pop’s first and greatest symphony.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7948-1276007,00.html

[Trauma-san]

New Music Express (NME) - 9 out of 10 stars, calls the album one of the greatest of the 21st century

Thought i'd type up the NME review for you lot:



"HAPPY DAYS

After 37 years of chin-stroking anticipation, get ready for 37 years of chin-stroking appreciation

Has there ever been a more eagerly anticipated album? Or a more hotly debated one? This is it folks, the Holy Grail of music geeks: The Beach Boys lost materpiece, SMiLE. Or at least, it almost is.


There is a "potted history" here which i can't be bothered to type up - it's nothing we don't already know anyway

Taking his touring band into the studio, he recorded this from scratch. Smile is 17 songs in 3 movements with melodic hooks repeated and rearranged throughout.. It has ambitions so far beyond pop that its embarrasing.

The first movement starts with Our Prayer / Gee. Part Gregorian chant, part barbershop quartet, it leads into a doo-wop that introduces some of the themes of second track Heroes And Villains. What a melody: a descending scale that seems implausibly long. That "you're under arrest" bit from the bootlegs.

Roll Plymouth Rock takes the H+V theme through a big band and a harmonica interlude and then introduces the timpani and bassline of Good Vibrations before reprising the Heroes them with electric harpsichord and Native American vocals.

The first movement ends with Cabin Essence (not, as often thought, Cabinessence, fact fans). The "doing doing" backing vocals, the ukelele, the "home on the range" and then the spiritual vocal harmonies take us to a primal gnostic space before returning us from the embrace of the divine to the tenderness of the rural idyll.

The second movement starts with a Wonderful that is neither as mawkish as the version on Smiley Smile nor as capricious as that on the bootlegs and takes us through Song For Children and Child Is The Father Of Man where Wilson sings, "Easy my child, it's just enough to believe / Out of the wild, into what you can conceive, you achieve". Segment closer Surf's Up is tearjerking. Wilson's age and frail voice has made its tale of lost childhood all the more poignant.

The final movement takes us through Vege-Tables (where the original chewed-carrot percussion came courtesy of Paul McCartney's molars) a delicate Wind Chimes with an unexpectedly groovy bassline, the terrifying Mrs O'Leary's Cow and the enchanting In Blue Hawaii in which Wilson exhorts God, or alcohol, to deliver him from night terrors and on to the calming beaches of paradise. Having finally finished his masterpiece, Wilson may yet find his Blue Hawaii. The album ends with a less frantic, more regal Good Vibrations.

You may now reach for the Kleenex.

Comparing Smile to pop music is like comparing the poster paint daubings of an infant to the vast canvasses of Velasquez. But Smile stands up with any of the great music of the 20th century. In its interweaved and repeated melodic strands it echoes Prokofiev's Kije Suite. In its appropriation of American folk it stands up there with the work of Gershwin and Copeland. In its sheer contemplative beauty it rubs shoulders with Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue.

Brian's a canny fella. Earlier this year he brought out a solo album so overwhelming in its mediocrity that any hopes we might have had about Smile were dashed. Now he's finished the year by realising his vision and delivering one of the greatest albums of the 21st century.

9/10

James Snodgrass"

[Trauma-san]

The Minneapolis Sun Times

Brian Wilson, "Brian Wilson Presents Smile" (Nonesuch)

There are two ways in which we must evaluate the legendary "Smile," popular music's most famous unreleased album (due on Tuesday): How would the Beach Boys' ambitious pop symphony have been viewed in 1967, when it was written (and aborted after 85 recording sessions), and how does it play after being re-recorded in 2004?

The short answer to the first question is daring, different and magnificent; to the second, curious, quirky and marvelous.

While it was conceived as a Beach Boys project, in the end it has become solely Wilson's; hence the title, "Brian Wilson Presents Smile." For this album, he stretched beyond conventional 1960s song formats and instrumentation to compose a singular work, not merely a collection of songs.

The pop wunderkind has created a stunning symphony of sounds -- part Beach Boys, classical, folk, children's music, circus music, jazz standards, choral music, barbershop harmonizing and church music. In short, "Smile" is a timeless, incomparably luxurious tapestry of American music.

This three-movement, 17-song masterwork can be appreciated just as a luscious musical opus. (It's a wonderful headphones album.) But Wilson, who was 24 in 1967, enlisted his friend Van Dyke Parks, then 23, to write lyrics for his "teenage symphony to God."

With the intellectual Parks' fanciful, allusive words, "Smile" spins an American tale of manifest destiny from Plymouth Rock to California and eventually Hawaii. The middle movement addresses the cycle of life: falling in love, having children and keeping a family together. The final movement deals with the elements: earth, wind, fire and water.

What does it all mean? Darian Sahanaja, Wilson's current musical director and the key player in resurrecting "Smile," says it's about birth and rebirth. If so, then "Smile" is a metaphor not only for itself but also for Wilson, the fallen and fractured genius of popular music.

Jon Bream

[Trauma-san]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Brian Wilson, "Brian Wilson Presents Smile" (Nonesuch)

There are two ways in which we must evaluate the legendary "Smile," popular music's most famous unreleased album (due on Tuesday): How would the Beach Boys' ambitious pop symphony have been viewed in 1967, when it was written (and aborted after 85 recording sessions), and how does it play after being re-recorded in 2004?

The short answer to the first question is daring, different and magnificent; to the second, curious, quirky and marvelous.

While it was conceived as a Beach Boys project, in the end it has become solely Wilson's; hence the title, "Brian Wilson Presents Smile." For this album, he stretched beyond conventional 1960s song formats and instrumentation to compose a singular work, not merely a collection of songs.

The pop wunderkind has created a stunning symphony of sounds -- part Beach Boys, classical, folk, children's music, circus music, jazz standards, choral music, barbershop harmonizing and church music. In short, "Smile" is a timeless, incomparably luxurious tapestry of American music.

This three-movement, 17-song masterwork can be appreciated just as a luscious musical opus. (It's a wonderful headphones album.) But Wilson, who was 24 in 1967, enlisted his friend Van Dyke Parks, then 23, to write lyrics for his "teenage symphony to God."

With the intellectual Parks' fanciful, allusive words, "Smile" spins an American tale of manifest destiny from Plymouth Rock to California and eventually Hawaii. The middle movement addresses the cycle of life: falling in love, having children and keeping a family together. The final movement deals with the elements: earth, wind, fire and water.

What does it all mean? Darian Sahanaja, Wilson's current musical director and the key player in resurrecting "Smile," says it's about birth and rebirth. If so, then "Smile" is a metaphor not only for itself but also for Wilson, the fallen and fractured genius of popular music.

Jon Bream

[Trauma-san]

Article from Paul Williams, one of the reporters who was in the studio with Brian recording it in the 60's.



Columnated Ruins Domino


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If he can't act upon it immediately and see it happening, it's not gonna work."

 Feature by Paul Williams
Photograph by Linda Eastman (the future Linda McCartney)
Published September 23, 2004

Twenty-six years ago, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys -- "one of the few undisputed geniuses in popular music," according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum -- was picked up by the San Diego police in Balboa Park, "under a tree with no shoes on," as recollected by a family member who came from L.A. to retrieve him. "His white pants [were] filthy, obviously a vagrant with no wallet, no money."
He was a millionaire vagrant, leader, and primary songwriter of "the most commercially successful American group of the sixties" (according to The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music). And next week, on September 28, 2004, one of Wilson's crowning creations, Smile ("The most famous unheard album in pop history," according to the New York Times), will be released for the first time. This is where I come in. I've been writing about this album for 37 years (since I was a teenaged rock-magazine editor), I helped make it famous, and I have Smile and Brian Wilson to thank for the fact that I'm living in San Diego today.

Brian Wilson, millionaire vagrant and auteur of the brand-new Nonesuch album Brian Wilson Presents SMILE, was found in September 1978 "lying facedown in the gutter" in Balboa Park, "without any ID, mumbling over and over, 'I want to die' " (quotes from p. 254 of Wilson's 1991 autobiography, Wouldn't It Be Nice) as a result of the unfortunate combination of substance abuse and an undiagnosed severe bipolar condition. He subsequently spent six weeks detoxing in the Alvarado Community Hospital (now called Alvarado Hospital Medical Center, located close to San Diego State University).

Substance abuse was also a major factor (along with the bipolar condition, which, as in the case of Vincent van Gogh, may also have contributed significantly to the man's universally recognized expressive genius) in Wilson's inability to complete in 1966­1967 his most ambitious (and expensive) rock-music project, the Beach Boys album Smile. Smile was intended as a follow-up to the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds, inspired by the Beatles' Rubber Soul and in turn acknowledged by Paul McCartney as the primary inspiration for the Beatles' landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band...and as a follow-up to and musical extension of the Beach Boys' boldly experimental 1966 #1 single "Good Vibrations."

How Smile brought me to San Diego: I was at a Bob Dylan concert in Los Angeles in 1992, and during the intermission I ran into my friend, British singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding. Wes was with his producer Andy Paley, whom I knew as a close friend of and sometime songwriting collaborator of Brian Wilson. (In fact, when I'd last met Andy, he'd been putting together a box set of unreleased tracks and fragments from the unfinished Smile album on assignment from Capitol Records. That box set never materialized, alas, due to opposition from some of the other Beach Boys, who thought Brian had made a fool of them, having them grunt into microphones during his amphetamine-and-marijuana-fueled extravagantly experimental Smile sessions.) Anyway, while Wes and I gossiped about Bob Dylan, Andy spotted his friend, San Diego singer-songwriter Cindy Lee Berryhill, and called her over to join our gathering.

Cindy was then in an intense stage of the Brian Wilson fascination that most young rock musicians go through sooner or later (for example, John Lennon's son Sean, who in interviews a few years back was proclaiming the Beach Boys a more seminal rock band than the Beatles). She'd met Andy through her friend Domenic Priore, then a Carlsbad resident, who'd established himself as a writer and rock-and-roll maven by assembling and self-publishing a book about the legendary Smile album called Look! Listen! VIBRATE! SMILE!

I then and there forgave Domenic for reprinting my extensive Smile writings without permission or payment because this attractive young woman whose first album I'd heard and liked (another Dylan fan had sent me a tape of it) was very excited to meet me, as she had just been reading my long interviews/conversations with producer/Brian intimate David Anderle about why the Smile album was never completed. She gave me her phone number and suggested we get together to talk about Brian Wilson. A year and a half later, after I'd introduced her to Anderle (she was on a quest to meet all the major "Brian people") and to BW-fan and Warner Bros. Records president Lenny Waronker and to Smile coauthor Van Dyke Parks, I found myself moving from Northern California to Encinitas to live with Cindy. Today we're married and have a three-year-old child...and I still live in Encinitas.

That three-part interview/essay about Smile (and the fact that I was lucky enough to visit the Smile recording sessions as Wilson's guest) has brought me a lot of attention over the years (climaxing in bringing me a wife and child and a beautiful city to live in). When my first book was published in 1969, Rolling Stone wrote: "The long interview with David Anderle about Brian Wilson (itself worth the price of the book) is a short story, complete with beginning, middle, and end. The interview form becomes a sophisticated narrative device for telling the story of an artist's struggle with himself, his friends, and the limits of his art." And to my delight, I am often mentioned alongside composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein as one of the key voices early on calling the world's attention to the greatness of the Smile compositions and recordings. Of course, this was not such a happy accomplishment when Smile came to seem a sort of albatross for Brian, a legend he might never be able to live up to or escape.

But all that is in the past, now that Brian has gone back into the studio with his current band and has rerecorded Smile quite successfully and is proudly presenting it to the world on a record label best known for its classical music offerings. So now that the album, against all odds, is out and it is good and will bring happiness to most who listen to it, I can proudly share with you this 1997 pronouncement by Beach Boys historian and sometime Brian Wilson manager David Leaf, in his introduction to my book Brian Wilson & the Beach Boys -- How Deep Is the Ocean?: "While Paul Williams was not the first to put Brian Wilson 'on paper,' he may be the one to have most influenced virtually all the writers who fell in love with the artist."

There's a lot to fall in love with. But before I say more about that, I'd like to mention that Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, symbols of Southern California to music lovers all over the world, have a significant connection to San Diego County that goes beyond acknowledging "Swami's" as a famous surfing spot in the lyrics to their first big hit, "Surfin' USA." That connection has to do with the fact that three of the five Beach Boys -- Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson -- were brothers and that, while they grew up in Hawthorne, just south of Los Angeles, their father, Murry Wilson, spent part of his childhood in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, where his parents settled when they came west from Kansas, and after Murry's grandfather's dreams of becoming a prosperous grape grower in Escondido fell through. So the California dream that inspired this family of Los Angelenos had strong roots in north San Diego County. The Wilsons, who would do so much to tell the world about Southern California beach and car culture, came to Hawthorne from Kansas by way of Escondido and Cardiff.

Smile, the newly recorded and just-about-to-be-released Smile, was always intended to be a Beach Boys album, but Brian's brothers Carl and Dennis are dead now, and the Beach Boys as such no longer exist, although there is still a touring group or two that performs under that name or a variation on that name. The musical legacy of the Beach Boys on record is kept alive by Brian, who, after all, wrote the music for most of the group's songs and produced and arranged most of their records. Brian Wilson, in the past nine years, has released two excellent solo albums (I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, 1995, and Imagination, 1998) and a seemingly uninspired one (Gettin' in over My Head, 2004). I say "seemingly" because I don't feel I've listened to it enough to be certain of my judgment. Maybe it will come to mean more to me if I listen to it more, if I take the time to find a way into it. He has also released several live albums that again I defer judgment on because I don't think I've listened to them enough. I can say that the live shows of his that I've seen and heard have been terrific. The music is good, the band is very good, and Brian's enthusiasm for performing is surprising and infectious. It's surprising because in the past Brian did not enjoy performing live and was notoriously uncomfortable onstage. This is a real turnaround that has happened for him in the past five years, and insofar as the new Smile is much better, much more enjoyable, and less self-conscious than I would have expected, I think primary credit must go to his current band and his relationship with them and his new relationships with his music and with his audience as a result of his breakthroughs as a performer.

I might not be the best person to tell you how good this new, long-awaited Smile album is or is not. After all, I've been in print proclaiming how great it would be for 37 years now; I might be pretty invested in proving I was right all along. And on the other hand, I heard those extraordinary tracks (recorded music without voices) Brian played for me in late '66, and I've heard the sublime pieced-together Smile songs that have been included on Beach Boys albums over the years ("Surf's Up," "Cabinessence," and half of the second disc of the 1993 box set Good Vibrations)... So I could get caught in comparing my memories of those delights with what I'm hearing now. No, the right person to assess this new album is your child or your friend's child between ages 4 and 14, who is almost certain to be grabbed and thrilled by the Beach Boys' (and Brian Wilson's) 1960s hits, as heard on discs 1 and 2 of that box set or on all sorts of greatest-hits compilations. Music that will live forever and speak across the ages. Is this new Smile more of the same?; different flavor but just as irresistible? I think it could be. But play it for a child if you want to know for certain.

Smile 2004 is a triumph, I think. These were always good songs that Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson wrote, albeit that the jilted lover, Brian Wilson's cousin and heretofore primary lyricist, Mike Love, is on record as saying, " 'columnated ruins domino,' what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Mike's point was that Van Dyke and Brian were going to lose the universality, the appeal to a mass audience, that had made the Beach Boys millionaires. But he missed Van Dyke's point, which is that Beach Boys music is both as highbrow and as lowbrow as J.S. Bach and that if you call a song "Surf's Up" and return gracefully to that phrase, you can have it both ways. This, after all, was the song that had won over Leonard Bernstein, a man who presumably had never hung ten or watched from the shore as someone else did.

What makes it a triumph? The beauty of the melodies and of the language and the way melodic and verbal motifs weave in and out through the whole tapestry of music and of American history. The way the phrase "child is father of the man" has become so central to this rendering of Smile, as though it were a celebration of Brian's rebirth thanks to living with his adopted infant daughters. The richness of the music pictures and the word pictures blended together here. The excellence of Brian's singing on the album, in spite of his 62 years of hard living. The profound Mozart-like simplicity achieved in this composition for voices and instruments. The remarkable lack of self-consciousness in this work and these performances despite the history of the album/composition...

In our famous conversation about Smile that appeared in three parts in my magazine Crawdaddy!, David Anderle said, summing up our discussion of Smile and why the glorious, ambitious album was never completed in 1966 and 1967, "It has to happen immediately with Brian, the idea comes to the mind and he understands it instantly. If he can't act upon it immediately and see it happening in front of his eyes, it's not gonna work. That's what happened with Smile." So it wasn't just the drugs and Brian's mental/emotional condition and the doubts of the other Beach Boys, though those were delaying factors...

And how, after all these years and against all odds, has he managed to put Humpty Dumpty together again? To me it is clearly the result of the man's, the artist's, rebirth as a performer. Onstage it happens immediately: you play the music and the audience receives it and responds. Brian had this experience and obviously found it very fulfilling when he went on tour in 1999 with his new band and again the following year when he performed his masterpiece, Pet Sounds, live at the Hollywood Bowl and in Europe and Japan. A hard act to follow...but he did have another masterpiece, the legendary unrecorded Smile, waiting in the wings, and he decided to perform it in England, where his most adventurous music had always been warmly appreciated. Having performed Smile live successfully and to a warm response took the edge off it. Now he could go into a studio not feeling that he had something to prove or some kind of impossibly challenging task ahead of him. He could sing and perform in the moment, as one does onstage, knowing that the musicians with him understood this and him and his music. Now it was free to happen immediately. The result is, as I say, a triumph. One that will certainly serve to seal Brian Wilson's place among the great composers of the western world, a man with a body of work that will live and move listeners forever.

And it's not only about surfing. It's also about surviving, which is where Brian's Balboa Park experience -- a low point in his life -- comes into it. On the new album, on Smile, Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson via "Surf's Up" claim surfing as a universal metaphor, as most San Diegans could have told them it is.

And I'll mention, because though it shouldn't be necessary to know this, it could add to the album experience to learn that songs 11 through 16 on the new album are the remains of a composition known as the "Four Elements Suite." "Vega-Tables" and "I'm in Great Shape" are the earth, "Wind Chimes" is air, "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" is fire (one of the factors that originally made it difficult for Wilson to complete Smile was his conviction that this piece of music in its original form was responsible for a fire that broke out near the recording studio), "In Blue Hawaii" is water, and (I think) "On a Holiday" represents the interface between water and air.

Get the album, let your kids hear it, and if you want more, you can't go wrong with the box set Good Vibrations. This is your chance to hear tomorrow's classical music today. And if it seems light and popular, that of course is exactly what Mozart was in his era.

How did Brian Wilson of Beverly Hills end up in a gutter in Balboa Park? you might be wondering. It's a typical Southern California story. According to his autobiography, Brian was talking with "a nicely dressed man" in a hotel bar in Century City. The man "was a salesman, and his mom and dad had a place in San Diego where he sometimes stayed." So they drive south, and the next day Brian walks to a local bar where people buy him drinks and then he goes for a hike in the park. It sounds like a scene from "Heroes and Villains" as performed on the new Smile album.

It's a wonderful record, I tell you. I haven't changed my tune. Neither has Brian, though he's not drinking now. The album was named from an American Indian saying, "The smile that you send out comes back to you." I'll testify to that.

Brian Wilson will perform Smile at Spreckels Theatre on Saturday, October 30.

[Trauma-san]

Entertainment Weekly - Grade : "A"

Beach Party
Brian Wilson's latest was worth the (37-year) wait.
by Chris Willman

Once, Todd Rundgren recorded an exact replica of "Good Vibrations", just because he could. Now Brian Wilson's recorded his own note-for-note "Vibrations" copy--a few rewritten lyrics or extended passages notwithstanding--with a better excuse: He's painstakingly duplicating an entire 1967 Beach Boys album that never quite actually existed. SMiLE got consigned to the trash heap, and became the holy grail of rock projects, after other band members openly groused about its wigginess. But though it remained legendarily incomplete, several classic numbers ("Heroes and Villains", "Surf's Up") did see daylight, and lesser scraps have been widely bootlegged. Hearing its original architect re-create this treasure trove of lost-and-found material with ringers (Wilson's touring band almost does the Beach Boys better than the Beach Boys), you may wonder if this is SMiLE-mania--not the real SMiLE, but an incredible simulation!

But screw all that, because the mirth and beauty of the work trump any concerns about reassemblage. As "finished" by Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks, SMiLE fulfills its 37-year promise, detailing what'd happen if you threw Stephen Foster's parlor folk, Aaron Copland's orchestral Americana, the Four Freshmen, some kiddie pop, and a sound-effects record into an acid-laced blender. With a new melodic idea occurring every 45 seconds on average, it's a gorgeous trip back to a time when anything seemed possible, rendered only slightly melancholy through a four-decade filter of diminshed musical expectations. Purists will suggest SMiLE was better off as myth, but I'll take this version of the story where Shubert not only gets to finish his eighth symphony, but tours and sells t-shirts behind it.

Grade: A

[Trauma-san]

Sunday Times - London - 5 out of 5 stars

BRIAN WILSON
Smile
Nonesuch 7559798462




I assume we all know the story: Smile was destined to be the Beach Boys’ follow-up to Pet Sounds, but Brian Wilson suffered a breakdown and the project was aborted, becoming pop’s great “lost” album. Now, 37 years later, Wilson has re-recorded the entire album, working with his original collaborator, Van Dyke Parks, and his own current band. There are no Beach Boys on this Smile. So how do we approach such a singular artefact? If we owned the many bootlegs, we could quibble over the track listing. Or we could admire Wilson’s courage, but moan that he shouldn’t have messed with our fantasies by making the album real. But why should we be so churlish? Smile’s journey through myriad American musical styles means that it was never bound to the time of its (intended) release, so it hasn’t actually dated. It stands alone and apart. If you only know the Beach Boys’ big hits, you might feel nervous about jumping into Smile’s three extended musical suites; but you can embark on this unique musical voyage safe in the knowledge that the more idiosyncratic territories are balanced by magnificent pop songs, including Heroes and Villains, Surf’s Up, Wonderful and Good Vibrations. And yes, the oooh-bop-bops on that track still send shivers up the spine. Five stars

[Trauma-san]

Interview from the Springfield Republican

'Smile' the 'Holy Grail' of rock'n' roll
Sunday, September 26, 2004
By KEVIN O'HARE
kohare@repub.com


He called it "a teen-age symphony to God."

That was 37 years ago, when Brian Wilson - feeling the pressure of worldwide anticipation but deep personal torment - decided to put one of the most eagerly awaited albums in the history of pop music on the shelf, half-finished and in shambles.

The "symphony" was called "Smile" and it was slated to be the follow-up album to "Pet Sounds," the 1966 masterpiece Wilson had created for his band, The Beach Boys. He'd quit the road by that time, opting for long, arduous hours of studio craftsmanship, while the rest of the Beach Boys traveled across the globe, singing their songs of fast cars, surfing and beach babes amid the endless summers of sun and fun.

Inside the studio, Brian Wilson's world was filled with darkness, despair, drug abuse and depression.

Now, in one of the most unfathomable stories of this or any year, the ongoing rehabilitation of Wilson has taken another huge step forward, as the once-reclusive genius has capped a decade-long comeback by doing something he once said he'd never do - he's finished "Smile."

The album, which has been partially re-written and completely re-recorded in the studio, is being released Tuesday by Nonesuch Records. It's remarkable to hear it in its entirety, especially after listening to scattered bits that appeared on Beach Boys' albums through the years, as well as on bootleg copies that only added to the set's mythic status.

What's even more amazing is how well Wilson has made it flow.

The album is pretty darned fabulous.

Speaking by phone from Beverly Hills recently, the 62-year-old Wilson was proud, relieved and at peace concerning "Smile," which to many hard-core fans is more than just the final piece in a puzzle, it truly is rock's "Holy Grail."

For years, Wilson wouldn't even talk about "Smile," in interviews or anywhere else.

"I just had bad memories about it from the drugs I was taking," Wilson said.

He was reportedly ingesting vast amounts of hashish at the time, acting increasingly bizarre and zoned out so much that he resorted to such madcap antics as insisting all his backing musicians wear fire helmets during a "Fire" segment ("Mrs. O'Leary's Cow") while recording "Smile."

He recalled that exact moment in 1967 when he abandoned the project.

"We were recording the fire segment. We even put a fire in the middle of the studio," Wilson said. "And a half-hour later I heard a building down the street burned to the ground. I thought that our doing the fire segment was responsible for it burning down. That's when I finally broke down and shelved the album."

It probably didn't help that his fellow Beach Boys felt Wilson had gone off the deep end with the project, which their leader had been working on from the late summer of 1966 until May of 1967.

"Mike (Love) and Carl (Wilson) didn't like it at all," Brian Wilson recalled. "Alan (Jardine) and Dennis (Wilson) were just sort of like neutral about it. But Mike and Carl were very, very against it."

All these years later, it seems hard to believe that anyone could be against an album that was anchored on one end by "Heroes and Villains," held up in the middle by the beyond-brilliant combination of "Child is Father of the Man," and "Surf's Up," and which closes with "Good Vibrations," the latter released by the Beach Boys in 1966 as a single - a precursor to "Smile."

"Heroes and Villains," along with a few other re-worked cuts from the scrapped sessions, subsequently appeared on the disappointing Beach Boys' album "Smiley Smile" in late 1967. "Surf's Up," served as the title song to the 1971 album that remains one of the Beach Boys' most underrated recordings. But the entire "Smile" album had never been completed and put into its proper context until now.

When Wilson abandoned "Smile" he also all but abandoned life, building an infamous sandbox in his living room for his piano, gaining a tremendous amount of weight, and spending most of his time in bed while falling deeper and deeper into psychological distress.

"The drugs I was taking slowly deteriorated my creative process," Wilson says now.

His recovery took decades. But with a lot of help from his wife, Melinda, as well as his management and friends, Wilson began resurfacing and, in the 1990s, teamed with the great L.A.-based power-pop band The Wondermints, led by Darian Sahanaja. Wilson started playing live again with an expanded musical lineup. D uring the March 2001 "All Star Tribute to Brian Wilson" at New York's Radio City Music Hall, he even performed "Heroes and Villains."

At a restaurant in L.A., surrounded by his wife and his management, he was finally coaxed into giving "Smile" another try.

"They had a gut instinct that the world was finally ready for it," Wilson recalled. "So I figured I'd give it a shot. We listened to the original tapes from 1967 and then created a third movement for it. Then Darian Sahanaja and I put all 30 segments together in sequence."

As Wilson and co-writer Van Dyke Parks (who was also brought in to help finish the project) see it, "Smile" tells a story of a journey across the U.S. from one end - "Roll Plymouth Rock" - to the other - "In Blue Hawaii." It ends with "Good Vibrations," and while the new version of that song is exceptional, it does contain some different lyrics than the more-familiar hit.

"We used Tony Asher's original lyrics, not Mike Love's lyrics," Wilson said.

There's apparently no love lost between Wilson and his cousin Love, the latter who still tours under the moniker of The Beach Boys, along with former Beach Boy Bruce Johnston.

Has Love heard the new "Smile"?

"No," Wilson said. "We haven't talked for about 10 years now. And after Carl died (in 1998) things even got worse."

Wilson doesn't sound thrilled with Love's continued touring under the Beach Boys' name, but he'd rather talk about why he re-recorded "Smile," instead of doing what some Beach Boys' devotees advocated - just patching together the old tapes.

"I wanted to get better musicianship," he said dryly. "My musicians are better than the original musicians that did it. They're playing sharper notes, clearer beats and the rhythm was right. The sound was better. All that made for a better 'Smile' album."

When the work was finished, he admitted feeling an immense weight off of his shoulders.

"I was so relieved I actually cried in the studio," Wilson said. "Because I was so relieved that we got it done. It was quite an emotional experience for me."

Together with his band, he premiered the piece on stage in London earlier this year.

"I was scared to death," Wilson said of the first night. "I didn't know how it would go over. Remember when Gershwin premiered 'Rhapsody in Blue' in 1924? That's how this was for me in 2004 in London. I was very nervous. But we got a standing ovation after the first concert and the next five (concerts). I was very proud of how it was accepted."

The British press hailed it, with The Guardian referring to "Smile" as "The grandest of American Symphonies" and The Daily Telegraph saying "the music echoed everything from Philip Glass to Kurt Weill to Chuck Berry ... Leonard Bernstein said Brian Wilson was one of the greatest composers of the 20th Century. He was not wrong."

Now Wilson brings "Smile" to the U.S., not only with the CD release, but also with a tour that runs into early November.

And the once-reclusive artist says he's feeling better every day.

"I was pretty mentally in a bad state of mind there for awhile. But I'm starting to get back into it ... I'm exercising again, I'm running and I'm going to buy an exercise machine that costs $15,000. In four minutes of exercise it's the equivalent of a half-hour of aerobic exercise - in just four minutes. It builds your body up to give you endurance."

After the band returns from an Australian leg of the tour in December, Wilson wants to work on "a rock'n' roll record inspired by Phil Spector's records."

He's already got seven songs penned for the project including, "You Could Make A River Flow," "Heaven," and "I Saw Her Again Last Night."

Spector, famed producer known for his "wall of sound" studio techniques, is facing charges in connection with the alleged murder of a woman at his West Coast mansion.

"I haven't talked to Phil in 20 years," Wilson said. "I understand he had an accident with a gun or something."

There's also been some speculation about Wilson working more with Paul McCartney, who has stated that "Pet Sounds" was an inspiration for the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, which was released in 1967. McCartney appeared on a relatively lackluster duet with Wilson on the latter's "Gettin' In Over My Head," album earlier this year.

"We haven't talked about it really at all lately," Wilson said. "I'm gonna call him in a few weeks and ask him about it (collaborating again)."

But for now, he's enjoying "Smile."

"It was a sentimental experience to recreate 'Smile,'" Wilson said. "I hope people in all the different cities we play enjoy it, and appreciate all the hard work that went into learning 'Smile' for them. I'm very proud of it."

[Trauma-san]

The Detroit Free Press - 4 out of 4 stars

PUT ON A HAPPY FACE: In the dustbin for more than 30 years, Brian Wilson's 'Smile' is finally finished and released -- brilliantly

September 26, 2004

BY TERRY LAWSON
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Remember Doonesbury's Andy Lippincott, the AIDS patient who refused to die until the Beach Boys' pop masterpiece "Pet Sounds" was released on CD?

Brian Wilson
'Smile'
FOUR STARS
out of 4 stars

(Nonesuch)

He might still be around if he had even the vaguest inkling that Wilson someday would actually finish its follow-up "Smile," without doubt the most legendary lost album in history. In what may be the most unimaginable comeback in pop history, Wilson, following a three-decade, often-exploited battle with mental illness, has followed his brilliant concert performances of "Pet Sounds" with a fine live album and a credible studio record. And now we get this reconstruction of "Smile," which was famously saddled with the sobriquet "a teenage symphony to God" in a legendary magazine story before the project was abandoned more than 30 years ago in a drug and dislocation breakdown from which Wilson has never altogether recovered.

Fragments have been officially released, and some of the songs, including the unlikely hit "Heroes and Villains," and "Surf's Up," the impressionistic art ballad that led Leonard Bernstein to declare Wilson a master composer, intended for the record were released on the substituted "Smiley Smile" and later Beach Boys albums. Bootleg reconstructions from the studio sessions have floated around for years. But with much help from his original collaborator Van Dyke Parks and his simply remarkable touring band, "Smile" has been re-imagined, and is one of those rare things in life that turns out to be nearly everything it was cracked up to be: An original, idiosyncratic and unabashedly American song cycle that deserves its oft-made comparison to the work of Aaron Copland, as well as to that of late '60s Lennon and McCartney.

For Wilson fans, the familiarity of most of this material makes initial enjoyment easier. (I've been listening, thanks to a friend, to a bootleg of the first live performance of the album for months, making it even easier for me.) Yet anyone with open ears will be hard-pressed to argue that the anticipation was all based on hype, or that the music isn't brilliant. Parks (presumably) has tied together once-random pieces of music with passion and precision employing orchestral links to take us on a time-suspended train trip of a Carl Sandburg America -- where even impenetrable lyrics like "And sunny down snuff I'm alright" become poignant and meaningful, and the abstract harmonies of "Wind Chimes" provoke summer dreams far removed from surfing and hot-rod fantasies, but oddly dependent on them as well.

Through studio magic or force of will, Wilson's vocals are beautiful and heartbreaking. And while it would be professional of me to find some fault with some overly ornate arrangements or too-precious word-smithing, it's just not in my heart. I love this music. It makes me smile. In Stores Tuesday.

Brian Wilson and his band will perform "Smile" and other songs at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty, Ann Arbor. 734-668-8397. $42.50-$85.

[Shallow]

Well there's no denying this guys perfection of harmonies. Obviously, a great album.


Keep in mind though that if you don't like Pet Sounds you won't like this. This album is perfect for the fans, unfortunately I don't see it attracting too many new fans. Brian Wilson is an aquired sound, you either feel it or you don't. If you do it's the greatset thing you'll ever hear, if you don't it good at best.

Personally I like it. I was under the impression that it was recorded years ago, and he just now decided to put it together and release, but it appear that he resung the vocals recently, and his voice in the lead vocals isn't what it used to be, not that it's bad, but it's just not the same. Good Vibrations sounds a little off (however it's still incredible), but every thing is intact (and in some instances better) musically. I think is he had gotten a vocalist to sing the album it could have taken off. Timberlake comes to mind. Not that I think for a second that he's make it better, but I do think it would help both Justin's career and the exposure of the album. Elton John would be nice over some tracks too. Of course if they did that they'd be dissappointing a lot of hard core fans that have been waiting for it.

The track names are little goofy as usual, but that's most likely because they have a deeper meaning. Trauma, if you could explain them to me, I'd appreciate it.

[Suga Foot]

I'll probably pick this up, I gotta see what all the fuss is about.

[Trauma-san]

I think if you continue to listen to the album, eventually you'll realize that Brian Wilson's voice, @ age 62, is at this point in his life at least 5 times better than any vocals Justin Timberlake has ever recorded.  He sings falsetto, that's weird as fuck, nobody sings like that, and it's just strange sounding.  I believe it's an aquired taste, though... his vocals on this album are nothing short of incredible, in my opinion.

Anyways, um... the song titles? Yeah, they're kind of strange.  The entire album represents America, and the contrast between the America Brian has known, in California, in his mind, in his music, and the America that exists, and Brian's love for both of them.  So lets see.. we've got

"Prayer" - he named this prayer, because he thought @ the time music was going to become spiritual, not in a god, Jesus, Muhammad sense, but in a music is from God so therefore beautiful music glorifies God sense.  He meant, music should be positive, and touch your soul.  He came in the studio one day, with this beautiful acapella song written, but it didn't have any words.  It's intranscribable, it's just the sound of voices singing... again... with no words.  On the original studio tapes, he calls it "a little prayer to start the album with".

"Gee" - is the dit diddy dit, how I love my girl part.  It's called "Gee" because it's a line lifted from a song called "Gee" that was out in the 50's? So it's a cover song, but it's only 1 line (the scratchy old record sounding part).

"Heroes & Villians" - This represents Brian's judgement of the people surrounding him when he wrote the song, The Heroes in his life were basically his drug buddies, and the Villians were his family and wife.  The lyricist, Van Dyke Parks, who worked with Brian thought the music Brian wrote for it sounded like a western song, so he made the song have a lot to do with the old west... again, representing a period in America, that we glorify in our minds, but had some villianous overtones (killing the indians, etc.).  Heroes, and Villians

"Roll, Plymouth Rock" - The pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock to settle America.  Rock & Roll is what Brian does.  Roll, Plymouth Rock, Roll Over... show us what's under you, Rock, Roll, Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims, etc. it's all about the settling of America.  Some of the lyrics of the song say things like "Once, Upon, The Sandwich Isles.... " and talk about the British settling Hawaii.  Other lyrics mention steamliners (modern ships, what Brian would remember) leaving Cheering, Beaded Indians behind her (How the Indians thought the people on the ships meant them good, so they Cheer with their Beads they've been given for their land, etc.)... This song is about the settling of America.

"Barnyard" - This song begins with a train... it represents the advancement of the settlers across the plains, you can hear the music and the beat sounding like a train, and the whooo hooo oooh oooh's in the background that sound like a train's whistle.  Brian's lyrics are about life on the farm, just as life would have been like back in the day in the time period of America he's talking about.

"Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine" - These are BOTH Covers... Old Master Painter is the short, 25 or so second orchestral piece before he sings, and then "You Are My Sunshine" is a famous old western/country song, fitting with the theme of course... Brian sings it here in the past tense, "You Were My Sunshine"... again, fitting in with the whole things you remember being different from reality, slightly tainted, etc.

"Cabinessence" - This song sums up the experience, or the ESSENCE, of living in a Cabin in the days of the frontiersmen.  He's singing to his wife "I'll give you a Home, On the Range" etc... There's a repeating "WHo Ran The Iron Horse?" chant, again referring to the building of the railroads, there's lines saying "Have You Seen the Grand Coulee working on the Railroad", and near the end, "Over and Over, the Crow Cries Uncover The Cornfield" which expresses the crow's or the bird's discontent in what Humans are doing to the land as they settle it, and also refers to farmers growing Corn, something very American, etc.

Then there's a slight pause, as Movement 2 starts, which is all about Life, and Rebirth, and the Loss of Innocence...

"Wonderful" is a euphanism for a Girls' virginity.  You'll never hear the song the same way again, lol.  It's talking about a sweet young girl who meets a 'nonbeliever" and "A boy bumped into her Wonderful"... and how her parents still love her, etc.  This is possibly the most Beautiful song he's ever written, with the exception of "Surf's Up"...

Next is "Song For Children" - for years, people thought this song was called "Look", and that it was simply an outtake never used, since part of the melody shows up, Canibalized, near the end of the released version of "Good Vibrations".  Brian intended for the melody to repeat, however, and this song was always a central part of his album! Everyone's thought for years it was just throwaway material, amazing.  Brian is all about Children, and this song is playful, beautiful, has an incredibly enchanting melody, has a hard driving 'verse' section, and features near the end beautiful vocals saying things like "Maybe not one... Maybe you too,... are wondering... wondering Who? Wonderful Me... Wonderful You..." just incredibly well written, and ties in with the theme of this movement, of growing up, and losing your innocence, wonderful me, wonderful you, Wonderful is the first song in the movement, lost of innocence, Song For Children... it just all flows back and forth.

"Child is the Father" - in "Song For Children" he starts this refrain that goes "The Child Is the Father Of The Son" and "The Child Is The Father Of the Man", and then this song is the full on "Child, The Child, The Child, is the Father Of The Man" section you hear so strongly, with Brian saying things like "Easy My Child" & offering the advice he's learned.  "Child Is the Father Of The Man" is a concept; what you are as a child, dictates, or fathers, what you will be as a man.  The Child, in a man, dictates what kind of father he will be to his son.  The Child is the Father Of the Man, The Child Is The Father Of The Son.  The "Sun" and the "Son" are puns meant to tie in with Brian's whole "Fun in the Sun" image as the founder of the Beach Boys.

This song disolves into a masterpiece, "Surf's Up"

"Surf's Up" is a metaphor for life, of course... surfers often say that Surfing itself is a metaphor for life, and years earlier, Brian had contended "Catch a Wave/And You're Sitting on Top of the World"... Surfer's wait and wait for that perfect wave... they miss waves... they fuck up and wipeout... and when they DO catch a wave, they're sitting on top of the world, but only momentarily, as eventually the wave comes crashing down, and your left lying in the Surf.  "Surf's Up" at a casual glance is another Beach Boys title, but the song, and the title, are all about how we grow up, and just LIFE.  "Columnated Ruins Domino!" is the 'hook' of the song, and it's so beautifully harmonized, it sounds like God himself descended from heaven to sing it.  It's incredible.  Possibly the most beautiful line ever recorded, in my opinion.  This is how MOZART wrote.  This is timeless, classic, universal stuff.  @ the end of the song, you're greeted with the refrain from "the Child Is the Father Of The Sun", as well as the lines about "A Childrens Song" and some of the harmonies from "Wonderful", tying all 4 songs together to close out the 2nd movement.

The third movement is the famous movement that troubled Brian so much, and he never was able to complete, until now.  It's extremely fragmentary, and the most daring of the three movements.  He intended for this, the final movement, to represent the 4 elements: Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water. 

"I'm in Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around" - Brian was on a health kick, and these two titles tied together play off of that, and the lines "Eggs & Grits & Lickety Split! I'm In The Greatest Shape Of The Agriculture" tie this into the earth theme, as well as his general theme of healthiness.  This quickly segues into "I Wanna Be Around" an old standard, that Frank Sinatra and others had recorded... "I wanna be around/to pick up the pieces/when somebody breaks your heart"... at the end of this song, it segues into

"Workshop" - the oddest of the songs, it features a low lying melody with Brian & the rest of the band sawing wood, hammering nails, beating things, chopping things, and just building and working on something.  It's not hard to imagine he's rebuilding his broken heart from the previous song.

This takes us full into "Vegatables", which Brian wrote for Children to want to eat their vegatables, which of course are healthy for you.  Nevermind that at the time, Brian was living off of candy bars and Milkshakes, I applaud his efforts.  Kids, DO love this song, too, so he achieved what he set out to do.  The vegatables vibe also ties into the Earth Element, and the farming/americana theme of the entire album.

Straight away we're into "On a Holiday" a whimsical song he wrote about a Pirate, who decides to take a vacation.  The 'vibes' are begun here, in this song (a vibraphone!), and repeat into the next song.  "On a Holiday" was also long considered to be just junk he wasn't going to use on the album, but oh no no.  This song is the first to represent "Air" as one of the elements, with the Vibraphones sounding like whistles, wind chimes, etc... it's a very light song, and mentions "Waikiki" in certain parts, again tying in with the America theme, and then has elements of the "Rock, Rock, Roll, Plymouth Rock Roll Over!" chant from "Roll Plymouth Rock"... with a "Long Long Ago"  we're straight into

"Wind Chimes" which begins with a little bit of "Whispering Winds" another song Brian wrote during this period, and of course both of these songs represent the Air element.  "Hanging down from my window, those are my windchimes.. on a warm afternoon the little breeze tinkles my windchimes... now and then, a tear rolls off my cheek"... simply a BEAUTIFUL song.   Brian sounds great on this song.  It's sad, but melancholy @ the same time... there's also a "BAH, DAH DAHHHH" loud section that repeats, breaking up the gorgeous melodies of the wind chimes, which leads us, and foresees the fire to come...

"Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" famously kicked over the lamp that started the chicago fire, and this song is the cow that starts Brian's tour de force, "Fire"...You can hear the whistles and bells of a fire engine as it frantically races to the scene of a fierce fire...

"Fire" is represented by a string section, and was originally recorded with the strings wearing fireman's hats in the the studio, as well as a small fire Brian set so they'd smell smoke.  The chanting in the background is meant to suggest souls tolling away in Hell, and the 3 basslines all represent the frantic fury of the fire.  The drum set represents the fire fighters all scuffling to fight the fires, and one by one, they are "beat out" by the drums, you can even hear the toms "Snap Snap!" at the end to put the last bass line out.

this leads us to "Blue Hawaii", which starts with the famous "Water Chant" Brian recorded in the bottom of a swimming pool, and Brian's newly added vocal line "Is It Hot As Hell In Here, Or Is It Me? It Really Is A Mystery!" which is meant as a glance back @ the trouble he's had over his life, much of it revolving around the insanity represented by the previous song, "Ms. O Leary's Cow".  Blue Hawaii is a gorgeous song, "I lose a dream, when I don't sleep, I'm slumbering."... Then he sings about Hawaii, Hawaii lay beyond the sea... Oh, I could Use a Drop To Drink Right Now... Take Me To A Luau, now, and Lay before me holy, holy cow" LOL Of course the song is about Hawaii, the perfect symbolism of Brian's America from his mind, Brian's "Fun in the Sun" personified as a beautiful state, settled by the British, and forever embedded in every American's mind as paradise.  @ the end of this , he revises the "Prayer" from the beginning of the album, leading us straight into

"Good Vibrations".  When Brian was a child, he came upon a dog barking at him, but the dog liked his mom... Brian asked his mother why, and she told a 7 year old Brian "He must pick up my Good Vibrations" and explained to him that dogs must be able to pick up good or bad vibrations from people.  Brian never forgot it, and wrote this song, about the Vibrations between us... it represents his 5th element!  "I, I bet I know what she's like... and I can see how right she'd be for me... It's WEIRD, how she comes in so strong... and I wonder what she's picking up from me?"

The song has additional melodies and sections not found in his original version, even though they were recorded @ the time, he didn't put them in the single mix... the lyrics are also from the original version he recorded with Tony Asher, and are more 'psychedelic' than the watered down lyrics Mike Love wrote for the song.

Breathtaking. 

[Trauma-san]

The Philadelphia Enquirer - 4.5 out of 5 stars

Lost and now found, Wilson's 'Smile' beams

By Tom Moon

Inquirer Music Critic

In the last two decades, new music from Brian Wilson has meant a trip in the time machine.

As he has slowly returned to music after a long exile of substance abuse and incapacitating mental illness, the rock pioneer has written songs that emulate the sun-dappled innocence of his enduring Beach Boys odes.

He has copied the keening, caramel-creme California harmonies, affirmed a post-Eisenhower ideal of courtship, and used new recordings (including this year's Gettin' In Over My Head) to hark back to the hookcraft he honed in the early '60s.

The efforts have been technically impressive - several years ago, Wilson assembled a touring band of Beach Boys obsessives who help him re-create every last "Sloop John B" shoop. But those efforts have also been a little sad: The nostalgia merchant in him wants desperately to beam everyone to the idealized realm of "Wouldn't It Be Nice," while the musician in him knows that this going backward is futile.

His latter-day records offer isolated moments of great beauty, but they're time-capsule moments, impressive for their resemblance to other long-ago peaks. They're oddly ritualized, sometimes empty throwbacks.

So there's reason to be apprehensive about the new Brian Wilson Presents Smile (Nonesuch ), due out Tuesday, Sept. 28. It's Wilson's re-creation of a project he and lyricist Van Dyke Parks began shortly after the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds astounded the world in 1967. Intended as a break with his past, Smile was more ambitious and less linear than anything Wilson had done, and he abandoned the work, in apparent frustration, just before it was to be released.

Since then, Smile has existed mainly as a mythic footnote, one of the great "lost" projects in rock history. Some of the songs from the sessions - "Heroes and Villains," "Cabinessence," "Good Vibrations" - were singles, and turned up on subsequent Beach Boys albums. But the work was intended to be a whole, and even the bootlegged versions that have been commonly available were incomplete, or not presented in what became Wilson's final sequence.

This sumptuously orchestrated new version of Smile, which spreads its 17 tracks into three parts, corrects all that even as it invites new questions.

If Wilson hasn't been convincing creating fresh pieces modeled on the old, how can he expect to sell a scattered series of song fragments, with defiantly nonsensical lyrics, that baffled some friends and earned him the ridicule of his bandmates when it was created? What makes anyone think that something considered indulgent in its day will somehow seem less so when dusted off and brought into the ever-more-cynical present?

It takes about 30 seconds into the new recording for those questions to be rendered irrelevant.

Smile opens with an a cappella vocal ensemble soaring above the trees, transporting the wordless "Our Prayer/Gee" to some hallowed place of worship by the sea. Occupying center stage is the familiar close-knit Beach Boys harmony, only it's more grandiose. More adult. The intertwined voices rise up, a feast of chordal "ohhs" and "ahhs" resolving in unexpected ways. But these are not defrosted versions of the master's 1967 scribblings; what comes out is a timeless natural wonder - a sound as majestic as a mountain, resonating for the ages.

Smile is full of those disarming, powerful moments. Wilson was 24 when he wrote this music, and despite the near-universal acclaim showered on his multitracked masterpiece, Pet Sounds, he was withdrawing into himself, composing at a piano in a sandbox in his living room while ingesting drugs and, if the accounts of those around him are credible, zoning out.

What he came up with was a curious art statement, an attempt at escaping what he considered the confining cliches of the Beach Boys with lyrics that were oblique riddles and idle curiosities. That wasn't the only change: Instead of recurring verse-chorus forms (a la "I Get Around"), his new songs were intricate pieces with many sections, each notable for its own jaw-droppingly beautiful melody.

He called those compositions, best typified by "Good Vibrations," "teenage symphonies to God," and that's accurate: They're episodic marvels, moments of cooing quiet followed by fireworks. The fragments are each beautiful in isolation, yet become magnified when put together, a succession of impossibly uplifting recurring motifs, each reaching higher than the last.

Though Wilson patterned the current arrangements on the original tapes, the new work extends his text - not just with marimba and tympani and other orchestral trappings, but also through the very character of his voice, which now exhibits a touch of experience.

He might have started out trying to duplicate something, but eventually Wilson took the iconic sounds he'd created long ago - vocals inextricably linked with the Friday night cruise and the surfin' safari and being true to your school - and gave them a resonance beyond the endless summer.

Smile echoes the feeling of limitless possibility running through all the great Beach Boys singles, then adds a new dimension - every now and then a slightly puzzled 62-year-old man peeks through the serene plushness, his voice hardened just enough to keep these breezy reveries close to Earth.

There are many marvels inside Smile. It's laudable that Wilson revisited the work, and amazing that his rhapsodic themes not only endure, but blossom so vividly in this sublime, carefully sculpted atmosphere.

Almost every one of the melodic motifs - with the exception of the gimmicky "Vega-Tables" and "I'm in Great Shape" - is the equal, in terms of sheer grace, of the sprawling orchestrations and outsized sonic tableaus. Even pieces we know by heart, such as "Good Vibrations," become elevated by the small touches - cellos rather than surf guitars handle the surging triplets, executing with a precision and force that sends the rhythm careening ever forward.

You might end up preferring the original version that blasted from the speakers at the pool all these years, but this one is essential listening all the same - as a quintessential expression of youth recast by experienced hands, an auteur's rare second chance to realize a vision that once slipped out of his grasp.

It does what Wilson's latter-day efforts haven't - it sends out good vibrations that aren't a carbon-copy echo, but exist on their own, entirely different frequency.

[Trauma-san]

The Atlanta Journal Constitution - "A"

Brian Wilson: 'Smile'

By NICK MARINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/27/04

Today, Brian Wilson delivers an artifact from the 1960s, a long-lost album as tied to that decade's cultural history as Woodstock and the Zapruder film.

Since the '60s, Wilson's unfinished "Smile" record has represented the unfulfilled promises of that most promising time. The music was an acid casualty, a hallucinatory pop song cycle abandoned when its drug-addled creator crumpled under the weight of his aspirations.

The Beach Boys' leader wanted to make the ultimate pop record, a "teenage symphony to God." Now, more than 37 years later, he finally has.

Wilson's completed and newly recorded "Smile" is no mothballed relic — it is a fresh and dazzling work, shiny as a toy fire engine. Although the record's playful spirit rekindles the psychedelic sensibility of its pinwheel-eyed original era, Wilson's sophisticated songcraft and pristine production make it sound ultramodern.

"Smile" builds on the Beach Boys' 1966 masterpiece "Pet Sounds," itself an ultramodern album. But where "Pet Sounds" songs compressed their ideas into fluid melodic lines, the grandest "Smile" songs — "Heroes and Villains," "Cabin Essence," "Surf's Up," "In Blue Hawaii" and "Good Vibrations" — expand into multipart mini-epics that dramatically and repeatedly reinvent themselves.

Listening to these tunes is like watching leaves change color in warp speed.

Stitching the key tracks together is an assortment of silly and imaginative short works. One song, lasting 58 seconds, is overrun with barnyard animal noises. Another integrates the sound of a siren. Another rhapsodizes about vegetables.

"Smile" is an omnivorous record. It finds ways to include snippets of "You Are My Sunshine" and the jazz standard "I Wanna Be Around." It uses drills, mallets and whistles as instruments. It has, even without Wilson's late brothers or the Beach Boys' surviving founders, towering harmonies.

The record's climactic final track is the immortal "Good Vibrations," seemingly unimprovable in the familiar Beach Boys version. But Wilson's "Smile" version has an additional vocal passage near the end, giving the song — and this remarkable, redemptive album — a spine-tingling extra dimension.

This is the sidebar that will appear in the paper:

CD REVIEW
Brian Wilson
"Smile."
Nonesuch Records.
17 tracks.
Grade: A