Back in January I reviewed Brian Wilson’s new song cycle, That Lucky Old Sun, which was performed in full at the Sydney Festival. The album recording, taped in the months after the festival performance, is already out on 180 gram vinyl (CD to follow in a couple of weeks). The entire recording is currently accessible in free online streaming audio at a host of newspaper websites including USA Today.
The extent of Wilson’s composing collaboration with Scott Bennett and Van Dyke Parks is still to be determined: certainly this is not the one-man-show of the Pet Sounds era. Still, I stand by my claim back in January that this new song cycle is “probably the most important piece of (mostly) new Brian Wilson music since The Beach Boys Love You back in 1978.” The album fulfills all the promise of the live performance and the demo bootleg which has been floating around the internet for the last year. It is great to hear Wilson (& Co?) orchestrating his music again with his characteristic panache and idiosyncrasies. No more trend-chasing production that has marred Wilson’s previous solo LPs. While Brian Wilson will always sound like 1988 and Imagination will always sound like 1998, That Lucky Old Sun should sound as timeless as Pet Sounds, Smile and Friends.
