CD Revue: Brian Wilson - SMiLE

For the past two days I have been listening to this album non-stop. It’s the best album of the year and an album I never though could exist. A masterpiece that had lost its chance to exist when Brian hand a nervous breakdown in 1967 and the Beach boys scrapped SMiLE and recorded Smiley Smile in its place. I’d long been a fan of the SMiLE after hearing bootlegs of the remaining tapes but it was an incomplete piece. The fact that Brian was able to put it back together with help from Darian Sahanaja and Van Dyke Parks after 37 years is astonishing. The rest of the Beach Boys are missed, especially Carl, but it was the right decision to make it a totally new recording. Both Brian and his band are in top form. This new SMiLE is a much happier work than I could have imagined. It’s hard to describe how special this album it is. It’s not just a collection of songs. It’s like a symphony with different themes and pieces of music returning. The most striking sections are the ones that have been released for the first time like “Child is Father of the Man” and “Roll Plymouth Rock”. My favorite piece is “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” which recreates the Great Chicago Fire with just music no lyrics and has to be one of the scariest pieces of music ever. I still can’t believe this thing exists.

BTW last Friday NPR ran an excellent story on SMiLE. Listen to it here.