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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
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