In the wake of Pet Sounds, as The Beatles released Revolver and popular music began to move irretrievably beyond its humble origins, Beach Boy Brian Wilson planned a follow-up album that would match and even surpass its already legendary predecessor. The album was to be called SMiLE, and famously, though the band and an incredible assortment of musicians would spend two years in the studio, what was finished of the album would be shelved. (The famous exception was "Good Vibrations," released while the sessions were ongoing and considered one of the greatest songs ever recorded.) Rumors circulated about Wilson's increasingly erratic behavior; nearly all of them, from having his musicians wear fire hats to building a giant sandbox in his dining room to house his grand piano, turned out to be true. Decades passed, and as innumerable rumored at-long-last releases of the album came and went uneventfully, both SMiLE and its creator assumed mythic statures. For years after, the Beach Boys continued to release material, with or without a dazed Wilson on board. Some of it was good, some of it appalling, but with the exception of a handful of intermittently released, retouched tracks, none of it was SMiLE. Throughout, fans rabidly traded session bootlegs and raved about the quality of the music, yet it appeared the vault was nonetheless sealed for good. After years of reclusive behavior and the deaths of his brothers and bandmates, Dennis and Carl, with the help of friends, Wilson recorded a solo version of SMiLE in 2004. Though the release and accompanying tour were widely acclaimed, there remained no word on the original recordings - neither news of a future release nor an explanation of why they'd never been issued from Wilson, who despite his resurgance remained notoriously uncomfortable with interviews. Finally and suddenly, in March 2011, the band and its label confirmed the release of SMiLE and a wide selection of the studio sessions that went into its production. Appropriately enough, the announced release date was further pushed back three times, but on November 1, the album known for 45 years as the most famous one never released finally hit stores, lovingly remastered and ready for posterity.
To say that the expectations for the album were impossibly high could only be an understatement: SMiLE's tortured history notwithstanding, as early as 1966 Dennis Wilson had said the new recordings "[made] Pet Sounds stink," and he was hardly alone among insiders. Almost inconceivably, even if the youngest Wilson was somewhat exaggerated, SMiLE fails to disappoint. The album, which until recently existed only in fragments and without a tracklist, sounds, if anything, more cohesive than Pet Sounds. To create his music, Brian Wilson sketched out modules he called "feels," fragments he would then interweave into a cohesive whole. The result is exactly what he intended to achieve: the multiple movements of "Good Vibrations" expanded to an entire album, ingeniously peppered with recurring leitmotifs that lend the work a unity even more remarkable given the circumstances. The album's lyrics, penned by Van Dyke Parks (a friend of Wilson's and songwriter in his own right), are fittingly concerned with sweep, grandiosely attempting to encompass the American saga down to the plights of Native Americans and the environment. The undeniable flow of Parks' words generally outweighs their obscurity (and equally undeniable pretension), and results in a number of songs that qualify as great on those grounds alone.
Yet SMiLE is unquestionably about the music, and as Pet Sounds suggested it could, it entirely transcends the confines of rock (even by retrospective standards, much less those of its day), staking a claim on Wilson's behalf for the title of greatest American composer - fully deserving of comparison to Bernstein and Copland, Mingus and Ellington. Beginning with the soaring a capella chorale "Our Prayer," the album promptly gives way to an astounding variety of musical styles. In keeping with the album's Americana fixation, it draws from every corner of American music, and in so doing employs instuments ranging from the simple musical jug to the electro-theremin, tenor ukelele, and Beach Boy favorite bass harmonica. Then of course, there are the harmonies that made the group famous to begin with. As in all other facets of his composition, Wilson here pulled out all the stops on vocal arrangements, matching "Our Prayer" on the driving chorus of "Cabin Essence" (mirroring the Iron Horse being sung about) and the undulating "Good Vibrations." The centerpiece of SMiLE is "Surf's Up," which was first released in 1971 on the album bearing its name. That version is a classic itself, and indeed, has always been recognized as one of the band's greatest accomplishments. It was compliled, though - in parts, newly recorded - without the input of Brian Wilson, and it suffers by comparison. The 1971 arrangements were more than competently overseen by Carl Wilson, yet Brian's mastery as a producer reveals itself in the minor details: for instance, the punchier bass was undoubtedly due to Wilson's insistance that it be played with a pick (a recurring trend in the bonus discs), and it noticably strengthens the arrangement of the first section of the song. More importantly, Brian's 1966 vocal for once trumps his brother's angelic alto, imbuing the song with a raw emotion that years later Brian would reveal he worried about exposing to the public. The song is emblematic of the importance SMiLE's official release: any faithful recording of this material would qualify as great, but only here do we find it as conceived and personally directed by the era's most singularly visionary composer in popular music, and sung by those six golden voices in their prime. It's simply one of the greatest albums ever released.
