Album Review

Have you ever seen a TV show that tries to depict Southern California in the early 60’s? Invariably, they use a generic recreation of the Beach Boys as background music, with falsetto “woo-oohs” and deeper “bom-bom” voices dominating the soundtrack. It sounds familiar and yet you can tell it’s just a pale approximation of the real thing.

Sadly, that’s what much of Brian Wilson’s new album, That Lucky Old Sun, sounds like as well. While Wilson, as the genius songwriter and arranger of The Beach Boys, has every right to cover old musical ground, it doesn’t mean that he can capture that old magic again. He goes all-out trying to do just that, but, like another famous 60’s band once sang, it’s all too much.

Things start promisingly enough, with lovely chorale-like voices surrounding Wilson as he sings about “That Lucky Old Sun,” which segues into the peppy “Morning Beat,” a tune that borrows from the Beach Boys template with fresh results. Things get dicey from there, though.

Musically, Wilson seems out of touch, not just with the present, but with what made those Beach Boys’ classics so great. The tinge of melancholy and frustration inherent in all those old songs were the perfect counterbalance to Wilson’s grand productions; here too many of these songs are so relentlessly cheery that it’s like the Beach Boys as imagined by Up With People. Songs like “Forever She’ll Be My Surfer Girl” and “Going Home,” dealing as they do with Wilson’s past, should have an intimacy about them, but instead they smack the listener in the head with the nostalgic, surf-rock sound.

When Wilson tries to deviate from the formula, the results don’t get much better. “Good Kind Of Love” sounds like a radio jingle, “Oxygen to The Brain” is just annoying, and “Mexican Girl,” with the mariachi horns and Spanish guitars, is clichéd beyond belief, both musically and lyrically.

Which brings us to another big problem: Wilson probably isn’t to blame for all the lyrical follies on display here (collaborator Scott Bennett and old Smile buddy Van Dyke Parks did the bulk of that work), but his name is on the front cover, so ultimately he’s responsible for the embarrassingly silly narrative pieces that connect some songs. They sound like some bizarre combination of Raymond Chandler and Jack Kerouac. (Sample: “Venice Beach is hopping like live shrimp on a hot wok.”) Wilson used to be able to evoke all of those scenes with his amazing melodies and arrangements; this is just lazy.

But the insularity of the lyrics is frustrating as well. We all know Wilson’s personal journey was harrowing, but the story has been told before. The specific references to his mental troubles in “Going Home,” for instance, can’t possibly resonate with the average listener as anything more than a Brian Wilson history lesson. If we wanted that, we could turn on VH1 Classic.

And yet, just when you’re ready to throw in the towel on That Lucky Old Sun, along comes the gorgeous ballad “Midnight’s Another Day.” With piano and strings behind him, Wilson sings hauntingly, “All these people make me feel so alone.” The melody is beautiful; the sadness and isolation is something anyone can relate to, not just troubled, musical supergeniuses. This is where the album should have dwelled all along.

Those looking for their classic Beach Boy fix might just be satisfied with this release. But, for the most part, this is Wilson on autopilot. On classics like Pet Sounds and Smile, the world inside Brian’s head was strange, lonely, and beautiful. On That Lucky Old Sun, it’s just a tacky TV-movie about the 60’s.

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