Brian Wilson - Imagination

Do you ever have impromptu "family album" days? Someone for some reason will pull out old pictures, and before you know it, the entire clan is sitting around in the living room, flipping through memories and sharing stories. Inevitably, Dad will probably get into an extended schtick about his "wild" days of youth, or his exploits with "the boys." It's always wildly entertaining, but there's also a sad wistfulness in knowing that the past is gone forever, trapped in memory.

"Imagination," the latest effort from former Beach Boy Brian Wilson, could easily have become as depressing as your Dad telling stories of his youth. To be fair, there is a consistent sadness to Wilson's vocal delivery and songwriting style; he is as wistful a fiftysomething as you'll find. However, the glory of this record isn't in the songs that look backward, but in the moments that seem to enjoy Wilson's present. When you see the Rolling Stones still trying to pass themselves off as teenagers, it's very gratifying to hear Brian understand his age and sing instead about coming to terms with the past, the joys of fatherhood, and the kind of love topics that are more ageless than "climb in my car and let's fuck" (which, I've often argued, is the subtext to pretty much every Beach Boys song produced in the early years (and not to say that cars and fucking don't remain concerns well into one's senior citizenry)).

It's a bit surprising, because the last thing one would expect from the son of an endless summer would be maturity and perspective. Both are there on "Imagination," however, and with the exception of a few missteps, Wilson delivers a mature expression of his original musical vision, at the same time crafting a shimmering slice of the kind of ethereal pop only he can conceive.

Even now, decades after the revolutionary sounds of his early Beach Boys work and the stunning "Pet Sounds," Wilson's ear seems tuned to a different plane of existence. The harmonies he crafts on "Imagination" (singing both lead and all backing vocals) are layered and textured in ways that are difficult for the average mind to imagine. In a recent article on the new album, co- producer Joe Thomas discussed what brought he and Wilson together in the studio. He told the story of working with Wilson on a recent country-western Beach Boys cover album, and how he was stunned that Wilson would correct the vocalists on their reproductions of the original Beach Boys' harmonies. After more than 30 years, Wilson could still pick out each note in the complex backing vocals and identify it immediately.

Stories like these, coupled with the music he continues to produce, paint Brian Wilson as the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of twentieth-century pop music, a man whose natural gifts are so perfectly matched to the art of a period that he easily assumes the mantle of "genius." Listening to "Imagination," that genius is still in full effect. Try to hear all the backing parts employed during the most complicated sections of "She Says That She Needs Me," or the slices of nonsense that push against each other to create the tension in the opening section of "Happy Days." Everything fits together so perfectly that the complexity is simplified. Like Mozart, Wilson's greatest brilliance might be his ability to take intricate music and present it in an easiliy-digested package, a package that even keeps you coming back time and again, tapping your foot and humming the tunes.

Yet it also becomes easy to take that genius for granted. After all, we've been listening to these harmonies in old Beach Boys tunes for our entire lives. These new songs do little to musically innovate past the same style of pop music that Wilson invented and has produced for his entire career. Though there is a new digital sheen to replace the soft warmth of his previous mono recordings, most of these tunes could have been put together by the Beach Boys thirty years ago. Back then, the lyrics might have dwelled on hotties at the beach instead of the joys in watching one's daughter grow to womanhood, but the music could remain the same.

It's no surprise, then, that the weakest moments on "Imagination" feature Wilson returning to a few Beach Boys chestnuts to give them a nineties' reworking. Of course they're great songs, and Wilson's by-the-book arrangements stick closely to the magic of the originals. But that sadness, born of the nearly-pathetic attempts of a fiftysomething to return to his teenage glories, emerges in full force on these tracks, and spoils what is otherwise a consistent and unified artistic vision for the album. When Wilson tries to reconcile a new-found maturity with picking up chicks ("Sunshine," a new, immature effort that offers an unconvincing attempt to recapture the Wilson swagger of old) or the sadness of leaving a love behind at the end of the school year ("Keep an Eye on Summer"), his efforts fail.

There is so much to enjoy on "Imagination" that Wilson's few creative stumbles are ultimately forgivable. When the sound surrounds you, when those amazing harmonies and vocals are floating around your head and carrying you higher and higher toward an ever-shining sun, then it's easy to believe that maybe everything really is okay and the world is perfect. Maybe that's all this world needs to be perfect: a new Brian Wilson record every few years, to remind us all that transcendence in pop music is still an absolute to aspire toward and occasionally achieve. It sure as hell is more than the Rolling Stones have given us since the mid-eighties.