Smile

I've liked the Beach Boys for as long as I can remember. Even when I was a little kid and listened to both kinds of music (country AND western) the Beach Boys always stood out for me. When I got into high school, and later college, I became more of a Brian Wilson disciple--although this was overshadowed by my ongoing love affair with the Kinks. I bought Brian Wilson's 1988 solo album debut the week it came out in stores. There was some great stuff there--his arrangements and vocals are phenominal--but like others, I was turned off by the pap-psych influence of Eugene Landy. The best song on the disc (which I didn't appreciate as such until some years had passed) was the vocal rhapsody "Rio Grande." That's a song that echoes Wilson's best compositions and complexities, and shares stylistic roots with "Heroes and Villains" from the legendary "Smile" album.

So now Wilson has completed and released a "finished" version of "Smile", and naturally enough, I was compelled to grab it at first opportunity. I mean, really, who isn't curious to hear this most legendary of history's unreleased albums? Granted, this version isn't the same as what would've come out in '67, but listening to it I can tell it would probably have earned more acclaim than "Pet Sounds", and been as influential as the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper." Unfortunately, "Smile" probably would've been the least commercially successful of the lot. It's beautiful, but doesn't sound all that commercial.

I've never heard the Smile bootlegs that are floating around (someone wanna help me out here?) but am familiar with tracks released on ensuing Beach Boys albums like "Smiley Smile" and "20/20". I actually like the new version of "Heroes and Villians" better than the previously released one (which I felt somewhat tedious), and am impressed with the "Song for Children/Child is Father of the Man" sequence. I'm not that impressed with the new version of "Wind Chimes," and the new "Surf's Up" is good, but again, the original is more powerful. "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" is something of a disappointment. I'd heard the original "Fire" first on "The Beach Boys: An American Band" documentary, and really dug the raw intensity of it. I mean, who wouldn't be impressed by the band bringing in burning embers from a huge fire down the streat to enhance the ambience of the recording session? Granted, the drug-addled belief that the song was somehow causing the fire is less impressive, but you take the good with the bad. This new version strikes me as too slick and sterile. Which is probably my biggest criticism of the disc. Too slick and sterile. It's a beautiful album, and I'm glad it's finally out (after a fashion) but maybe without the conflict generated by Mike Love, Al Jardine and the rest, who were pushing for more commercial, less experimental music during the original "Smile" sessions, Brian Wilson was able to spend too much time polishing his masterwork?

Still, this is a worthy effort. The tragedy is that now it is merely a musical curiosity. Were it released 30 years ago, it'd be a landmark.

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