Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun (2008)

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun (2008)

1. That Lucky Old Sun
2. Morning Beat
3. Narrative: Room With a View
4. Good Kind of Love
5. Forever My Surfer Girl
6. Narrative: Venice Beach
7. Live Let Live
8. Mexican Girl
9. Narrative: Cinco De Mayo
10. California Role
11. Narrative: Between Pictures
12. Oxygen
13. Can’t Wait Too Long
14. Midnight’s Another Day
15. Lucky Old Sun [Reprise]
16. Going Home
17. Southern California
18. Roll-Around Heaven [Reprise]

I'm sure everyone has heard a couple of Beach Boys songs here and there, I know I did when I was a bit younger. Combined with their slightly dorky name (Beach Boys?!), for those who don't really bother to listen, the Beach Boys easily become synonymous with the bit pieces used in commercials.

It's sad, really, but I think the first time I really, really listened was when Brian Wilson (the member of the Beach Boys) released SMiLE in 2004. I had encountered Pet Sounds before that but I didn't let myself drown in the music the way I did with SMiLE, parts of which made me believe that I had touched God, so sublime it was. With his heavenly feel for harmonies and arrangement, he constructed sky-high surround-sound angelic sonnets to... melancholy. Pocket symphonies marred only by inner turmoil.

In That Lucky Old Sun, the follow-up release to SMiLE, eagerly awaited by the gnarly set, the geriatrics, a few slimy critics, basically a bunch of old people and me, all of that melancholia seems to have evaporated under the warm, honeyed, Californian sunlight. Retaining his harmonic ideas, he seems to have given up complex, linear, classically-inspired construction for simple, incredibly catchy, poppy melodies and, instead of foward, built up up up! Think of the best four-chords you've ever heard and imagine them swallowing you up in a swirl of oranges and trees and sea and sand and surf and waiters, and you have an idea of what this album is like. The lyrics accurately create an amazing world for you to sink in, the spoken word adds not detracts from the album, and with the music, Brian Wilson has thrown out the complexity of SMiLE and substituted a wholeness for it.

Every song is a love letter to California, a celebration of Brian Wilson's ideal of California, and though it can sound a little forced at times, the joy that permeates every note is a welcome breath of fresh air. It's all so positive and happy and beautiful and... sublime. The way only Brian Wilson knows how.

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun (Sharebee)

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