"So I'm lyin' here, just starin' at the ceilin' tile

and I'm thinkin' about oh, what to think about

Just sittin' here listenin' and relistenin' to Smiley Smile

And I'm wonderin' if this is some kind of creative drought."

--Barenaked Ladies, "Brian Wilson"

Brian Wilson's Smile finally saw release last Tuesday after 37 years of aimless wandering in a scattered wilderness, the Holy Grail of Great Lost Albums. Up until last week, three generations of musicphiles have woven bootlegged snippets into their own vision of the final cut had Brian completed the record (the legend, of course, is that during the recording of what would become "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow"--a disturbingly harmonic paen to the Chicago fires--a number of infernos broke out around Los Angeles, causing Brian to draw psychic parallels between the events and his music; he shelved the project altogether due to "bad vibes"), had Mike Love not been such an almighty prick, and had Capitol ignored its corporate misgivings and unleashed Smile upon a very unsuspecting world.

For once, the hype is deserved: Smile 2004 is a spectral wonderland of intricate harmony and symphonic triumph, the fragmented forefather of everything it unknowingly spawned and was unknowingly spawned by it. Had it been released in 1967, The Beatles couldn't have produced a worthy rebuttal. This is not to dismiss The Beatles in any way; it's just that an album like Smile would've never occurred to them. Despite their occasional jaunts into trippy-dippy psychedelic throwoffs (see "Tomorrow Never Knows," from Revolver, or the later "Revolution No. 9," from the "White" album), the foursome always adhered to a rigid pop form favored in the marketplace, delectable songs with obvious openings and conclusions within a four-minute span. Even Sgt. Pepper's, arguably the band's "concept" album (though the "concept" is almost an afterthought: a beloved quartet namechecked twice, once at the beginning and once, hurriedly, near the end, like someone said, "Oh, shit! We gotta bring these guys back!" while the remaining grooves are reserved for historic, evolving Beatles pop), can't match Smile's freeform majesty--it's like a "concept" album devoted to the very idea of conceptualism: It flows with the fluidity and malleability of human thought, gathering, dropping, and repeating impulses at will, magnified by the languid beauty of Wilson's carefully structured harmonies (interpreted here by technology and The Wondermints) and steered by Van Dyke Parks' impenetrable lyrics that somehow slide smoothly off the tongue.

Obviously, Smile's only drawback is its lack of flesh-n-bone Beach Boys, specifically the youthful vigor of a Carl or Dennis Wilson, or even a smirky Mike Love and Al Jardine. "Good Vibrations" is a jarring experience, even without the alternate lyrics, primarily because of the contemporary pillow-soft harmonies. There was something about that trademark, forceful Beach Boys stab, where "ooos" jolted from within, almost in mid-"ooo," like Brian, in the editing chamber with only a razor blade and his muse, couldn't catch them at the exact moment they were breathed into a microphone--and sliced the air, as opposed to being poured quietly, pillow-soft, into an empty glass.

The Cult Of Brian

In the winter of 2001 I saw this girl, probably in her early 20s, hair trimmed very fashionably, sleek emo uniform clinging to her body, wielding a copy of Mojo magazine with Brian Wilson on the cover. She excitedly showed it to her friend, announced, "This man stands for everything great about music," then pressed her lipsticked lips to his flat paper cheek. I was both fascinated and repulsed--fascinated because Brian had transcended all the "loony" sandbox, bedridden, hermetic legends to resurface as an object of affection to a much younger generation, who probably had no initial concept of The Beach Boys as anything but those faceless/nameless senior citizens singing "Kokomo"; repulsed, unjustly, because I'm a fucking grizzled-before-my-time snob bitterly thinking, You're too young to REALLY care about him or understand what he's done--Brian Wilson is a secret that belongs to ME.

When exactly did Brian Wilson become hip again? The Once-Boy Genius, restored? Was it the mid-'90s, late-'90s? Fifteen years ago, shortly after Bri's full-yet-shaky return to recording and sobriety, his name had been forgotten by all but the most ardent supporters, most of them well over 35. Rock critics hailed his 1988 self-titled comeback, his first real solo album, as a welcome return, but in a time of synth-rock and vaccuum-sealed beermetal, who the fuck bought it other than tiny patches of secret lovers and devotees sneezed across the world? I picked it up, but only because of the adoring review in Rolling Stone (it compared "Baby Let Your Hair Grow Long" to the wistful "Caroline No," a song I had yet to hear because Pet Sounds had yet to be reissued) and my dad's Beach Boys zealotry fueled my own; in fact, the first piece of music I ever remember hearing was the Holland LP--not exactly the most preferable introduction to a group best known for "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations," but one I've never forgotten. When I relayed this nugget to Ricky Fataar, who played on the Holland sessions, four years ago, he was quite taken aback. "I haven't thought about that album in a looooooooong time," he sighed. Some of its cuts have become "classic" long after the fact, specifically "Trader" and "Sail On Sailor," both of which were resuscitated as part of a campaign to reintroduce the long-dormant--and unfairly maligned--'70s Beach Boys output, on Capitol's Greatest Hits Vol. 3, the first essential Beach Boys compilation in centuries, generously giving "Surf's Up," "Long Promised Road," "Good Timin'," and "'Til I Die" to the digital age for the first time. The blitz received a considerable boost when Cameron Crowe featured "Feel Flows" (curiously absent from V3) in Almost Famous (2000), first as a sneaky emotional cue in William Miller's initial backstage exchange with Penny Lane, then as the nostalgic, Polaroid-enhanced end theme.

Well, I'm exhausted. And I've got work to do. So I'll cut out early and piss you off. Maybe I'll come back later; I dunno. But in the meantime I am interested in theories on the Cult of Brian and its emergence. Any thoughts? Suppositions? Hypotheses?