Uncanny

SF GATE "This love letter to Los Angeles - wrapped around Wilson's dreamy version of the old Frankie Laine chestnut 'That Lucky Old Sun' - is the final step in the great songwriter's miracle rehabilitation, a new recording worthy of his stature in every way. His lyrics can be stilted, but the exultant harmonies and great glee with which the musicians attack the rich melodies is immediately contagious. Few records contain this much joy and wonder."

AUDIOPHILE AUDITION "A great deal of care went into Pacific Ocean Blue: Legacy Edition—everything from an elaborate and beautiful package, to carefully remastering, which greatly enhances the original lush and highly structured sound image. But the real discovery here is the previously unheard Bambu (or Bamboo), a never-released follow-up recording to Pacific Ocean Blue, which got caught up in the blowback of Dennis Wilson’s personal life and unfortunate financial difficulties. Five short years after recording Bambu he died in 1983 from an alcohol-related drowning."

SAN GABRIEL VALLEY TRIBUNE "I've had a great life. I want to give someone else the chance to do what I have done."

STOCKTON RECORD

THE STAR PHOENIX

THE SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT

SUNDAY MERCURY

RED ORBIT

CHICAGO SUN TIMES BLOG "But if his degree of involvement in this catastrophe is really as full-fledged as his press materials would have us believe, the only conclusion left is that one of the greatest songwriters of his generation can no longer tell trash from triumph--either that, or he's every bit as willing as the parasites around him to milk the legacy of the past for every dollar it will yield while stumbling through a present consisting of unforgivable crap..."

I now have no respect for Jim DeRogatis' supposed musical intelligence.

SIGN ON SAN DIEGO "Beneath all the harmonies and pop melodies lies a darkness that has typified Wilson's work since his mid-'60s spiral into mental illness."

TAMPA BAY ONLINE

LAIST "LAist was among couple hundred lucky fans left with goose bumps after being treated to an intimate set of music by Brian Wilson."

PITCHFORK "That Luck Old Sun" is "his finest non-Smile album since the golden age of the Beach Boys."

CNN "I'm happier now than I was a year ago. I started exercising and I started eating more of the right food and I started feeling better. I just get up in the morning and say my prayers."

EXCLAIM.CA

BROADCAST NEWSROOM When asked for the secret of his signature vocal sound, Wilson replied: "It's always been Telefunken microphones. That's all we've ever used - they're the best."

UNCUT "If you experiment, eventually something good can come out. But I’m not sure that drugs were good for me. Marijuana made me very paranoid about living up to my reputation. But it also helped me concentrate on my music. It gave me insight into writing songs that I didn’t have before. So it wasn’t all bad."

SHOWBIZ SPY

ANGRY APE

PR-INSIDE "A lot of young people are content to settle for trash. They don't want to know about people like Phil Spector. They don't want to listen to albums like (Van Morrison's) Astral Weeks."

TIMES ONLINE

THE INDEPENDENT

THE SCOTSMAN

MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS

MIRROR "If a screenwriter had invented the life and times of Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson it would have seemed too implausible even for the movies. Beaten so badly as a child by a father jealous of his talent, Wilson was left deaf in one ear. Yet he went on to become the most musically advanced brain in 1960s pop."

TELEGRAPH

THE WINDSOR STAR

MASSLIVE

MCCLATCHY "The band at the Republican kickoff bash here was the Beach Boys. Granted, they are also largely deceased, but they still go around touring as a band consisting of backup musicians and a vial containing several ounces of Brian Wilson's saliva."

LA TIMES
LA TIMES BLOG

THE CANADIAN POST

DETROIT FREE PRESS

KANSAS CITY STAR

HERALDNET

MIAMI HERALD

DIAMONDBACK ONLINE

BOSTON BLOBE "'That Lucky Old Sun' is a natural outgrowth, a song cycle themed around his beloved California. Wilson band member Scott Bennett has written the words, and Parks pitches in with spoken-word interludes. What makes the record work, though, is Wilson's ability to create melodies that blend the childlike and enthusiastic with the melancholic and nostalgic."

POP MATTERS "Four years later, That Lucky Old Sun answers all doubters with a big ol’ burst of that classic Beach Boys feel. The central theme of this album is looking back to ‘50s and ‘60s Los Angeles, so any concerns about aiming for modern production sounds can be tossed out the window. Clearly laying out this retro thesis right from the start, the album opens with its title track, a remake of a tune made famous by Frank Sinatra in 1949. Despite songwriting billed to Gillespie/Smith, there’s no doubt this is the beginning of a Brian Wilson record."

HARTFORD COURANT

BALTIMORE SUN

THE PROVINCE

EFLUX MEDIA

THE DAILY ORANGE

E-CANADA NOW

CHATTAH BOX

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

CALGARY HERALD

EFLUX MEDIA

STAR TELEGRAM

USA TODAY

NY TIMES "Brian Wilson sings with boundless enthusiasm on 'That Lucky Old Sun,' his first full album of new songs since 2004. That was when he remade and completed 'Smile,' the attempted masterpiece he had abandoned amid drug use and mental illness in 1967. In 'Oxygen to the Brain' on the new album, he sings, 'I wasted a lot of years.'"

"Lately Mr. Wilson, 66, has overcome his stage fright and toured extensively, performing the complete 'Pet Sounds'and 'Smile' along with other hits he wrote for the Beach Boys. 'That Lucky Old Sun,' which was commissioned for a performance last year at the Royal Festival Hall in London, is a latter-day sequel to those two albums. It applies their elaborate structures and sounds to a concept: a day in the life of Los Angeles, from one dawn to the next."

"Los Angeles becomes the same sunny city Mr. Wilson defined with the Beach Boys in the mid-1960s, now tinged with regrets for lost time. 'Goin’ Home' declares, 'At 25 I turned out the light/’Cause I couldn’t handle the glare in my tired eyes/But now I’m back.'"

"Produced by Mr. Wilson, the music is packed, even overstuffed, with echoes of his Beach Boys marvels: chugging rhythms, creamy vocal harmonies, oom-mow-mow nonsense syllables and favorite instruments like bass harmonica, temple blocks, chimes and French horn. 'That Lucky Old Sun' is an uninterrupted suite of 17 tracks that lasts 38 minutes, barely longer than 'Pet Sounds.' Except for the title song, a pop standard by Haven Gillespie and Beasley Smith, Mr. Wilson wrote the album with his band’s keyboardist, Scott Bennett, and with Van Dyke Parks, who provided wordplay-laden lyrics for 'Heroes and Villains' and other 'Smile' songs. (Mr. Parks also wrote songs for Mr. Wilson to sing on 'Orange Crate Art,' a 1995 album that portrayed California with a wider historical sweep.)"

"The lyrics — and nutty spoken-word passages written by Mr. Parks — sketch a Los Angeles filled with lovers and dreamers, but they circle back to Mr. Wilson’s own story. In 'Midnight’s Another Day,' a spacious, swaying ballad about chronic depression, he sings, 'Swept away in a brainstorm/Chapters missing, pages torn' and climbs toward a choral revelation, 'All these people make me feel so alone.'"

"Mr. Wilson and his collaborators strive mightily to make 'That Lucky Old Sun' a new career landmark, and after the simplistic ditties that filled his previous solo albums, it’s a breakthrough. But too often the songs are patchworks of Mr. Wilson’s past glories, making references that are far too recognizable. For all its determined optimism 'That Lucky Old Sun' ends up as more an affirmation of Mr. Wilson’s legacy than an expansion of it."