SMiLE!

For all the years I've been able to remember, I've hear people talk about records they can listen to all the way through without skipping from one track to the next. In all that time, I've never had an album to which I could do that. I've never bought an album I can sit all the way through on the first listen. Todd Rundgren's stuff has come pretty close, as has Alan Parsons' and Aimee Mann's. But, no matter how good it was, how much I liked it, I've never sat so transfixed by what I heard coming out of my speakers that I could let the rest of the world wait.

This year, however, marks the first time ever I could do just that. I'm listening to the album right now. I'm just as transfixed by it now as I was the first time I played it two weeks ago. I've listened to it every day since. Every time, I've listened to it all the way through.

That album is Brian Wilson's SMiLE.

Long thought lost forever, it has been the stuff of legends (and many bootlegs.) From the first track (Our Prayer/Gee, a title vaguely reminiscent of a Turlough O'Carolan piece), I was hooked. This sixty-two year-old former Beach Boy still has captured the spirit of the music, and he doesn't hold back. Three or four tracks into the album, I found myself thinking "Hey! Didn't I hear that snippet of melody in another track?" I don't know the technical term for it, but this album does that a lot. I'd be listening, and a melody, or even a line of lyrics from an earlier song will pop up out of nowhere ... It's just magnificent! (I call it a 'theme and variations.' That is, I think that's what they used to call that sort of thing in my music classes when I was younger.)

In other words, he's put out a wonderful ... I don't know what to call it. It seems as if (and this is probably the case) he and the new band with which he has teamed (the Wondermints) just wanted to do some good music. The words "concerto," "opera," or "symphony" could be combined with words like "rock," "pop," or "modern," but we've all heard that before. Yes, Brian and the Wondermints have done pop/rock music. Yes, they're considered modern. Yes, concertos, operas, and symphonies have movements in them. But, instead of combining any of those words from the two lists I've just given, I'll simply tell you that it's moving music.

And, I must say that hearing Good Vibrations as Brian Wilson intended it to be is quite good! The "new" version makes more sense.

I, I love the colorful clothes she wears
And she's already working on my brain
I, I only looked in her eyes
But I picked up something I just can't explain

If you want to hear the rest, go get the album yourself! You won't regret it at all!