DUBCC - Tha Connection > Outbound Connection

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

<< < (3/11) > >>

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

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page