Uncanny

INDEPENDENT "To borrow the football parlance, this was very much a gig of two halves, the first given over to Brian Wilson's ill-judged 'reimaginings' of Gershwin, the second featuring Beach Boys classics played in note-perfect detail by his band, occasionally augmented by the Stockholm Strings sextet."

ROAR E-ZINE "De bewogen geschiedenis van één van de grootste, nog levende geniën uit de popmuziek zal voor de meesten een bekend verhaal zijn. Brian Wilson richtte met zijn twee broertjes Carl en Dennis, zijn neef Mike Love en goede vriend Al Jardine The Beach Boys op. De luchtige surfliedjes van de band drukken een grote stempel op de sound van de jaren zestig en vooral Pet Sounds is tot op de dag van vandaag één van de belangrijkste albums dat ooit is opgenomen. Brian heeft een dominante rol in de groep; hij schrijft het merendeel van de hits, bepaalt de arrangementen en stuurt het geluid van de band in een meer experimentele richting. De geestelijke gezondheid van de bandleider gaat echter snel achteruit en leidt tot het uiteenvallen van The Beach Boys, voor Smile, de opvolger van Pet Sounds af kan worden gemaakt."

ICON FETCH "I [Tony Peters] just talked with Beach Boys' engineer Mark Linett for my Icon Fetch show. He mentioned that the LP version will have an entire album side of rarities exclusive to the vinyl. And, from what I understand, the 45 included in the deluxe edition will be unique as well. I asked him if the deluxe edition was essentially everything - he said that they started with roughly seven CDs worth of material and whittled it down to five. He also touches on several myths - including whether Paul McCartney was actually at the 'Vega-Tables' session, and whether Brian Wilson actually destroyed the session tapes for the 'Fire' sequence. We'll be posted the Mark Linett interview is a week or so...stay tuned. ONE MORE THING - Mark agreed to come back on the show once the SMiLE sessions box is actually in stores to answer any other questions people might have. You can leave those on my website, or email me directly at host@iconfetch.com and I'll pass them along to him. --Tony [Peters]"

An earlier ICON FETCH blog post further discussed the up-coming SMiLE Sessions box-set: "The fine folks at Capitol Records / EMI Music Group have been kind enough to give me a preview copy of the forthcoming “SMiLE Sessions” from the Beach Boys. Understand that this is the Holy Grail of unreleased music; the most famous album never released – until now. Heavily bootlegged, countless inferior copies have traded hands for years. I've setup an interview with one of the guys who put this new set together, Mark Linett, and I hope to be able to talk with other important people who were involved in the making of SMILE. Over the next month or so, I’ll also be blogging about the set – what’s included, what was omitted, sound quality, sequencing, you name it. With a release that’s 45 years in the making – let’s not make any snap judgments, shall we?"

SABOTAGE TIMES "In those bygone halcyon days the idea that you could have too much of a good thing – too much sun, too much sex, too many drugs, too much fun – was simply not on the agenda. And yet, by the end of the decade, as 60s celebrations curdled into 70s hangovers, nowhere was the downside of living according to an unbending pleasure principle seen more clearly than at the heart of The Beach Boys."

GUARDIAN "Add Some Music to Your Day comes from the Beach Boys' 1970 album Sunflower – in that post-Smile period of their career that was long regarded as an anti-climax, but which over recent years has been rehabilitated. It wasn't a huge hit at the time – it reached No 39 in the US – but the Beach Boys were on their uppers at the time, having been disavowed by the Serious Rock crowd and not yet had their commercial revival as America's Band, which came with the Endless Summer compilation in 1974."

PITCHFORK "The compilation is curated by VAN DYKE PARKS himself, drawing on what he calls 'my earliest studio adventures in the 60s.' The roster of collaborators represented here is dizzying-- Little Feat, Arlo Guthrie, Sal Valentino, Bonnie Raitt singing calypso-- and hearing Parks' unifying hand presiding over this collision of styles makes for a wonderful way to experience the art of his arrangements; their lushness, their invention, how they provide the texture and teeth to a composition."

WESTWORD "​Caribou Ranch, near Nederland, was a major recording studio throughout the '70s and early '80s. The 178 artists who recorded there over the years include such legends as Elton John, Billy Joel, the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa and Joe Walsh. But when a fire destroyed the control room in 1985, owner James Guercio closed the studio. More than two decades later, Mark Brown ... is collaborating on [the documentary] with Guercio, Kenny Passarelli and others."

Record Mirror, December 21, 1968, interview with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys

"The public is evolving too. A couple of years ago we got very paranoid about the possibility of losing our public. We were getting loaded, taking acid, and we made a whole album which we scrapped. Instead, we went to Hawaii, rested up, and then came out with the 'Smiley Smile' album, all new material. Drugs played a great role in our evolution but as a result we were frightened that people would no longer understand us, musically."

"I live in the woods in California, near Death Valley, with 17 girls. They're space ladies. And they'd make a great group. I'm thinking of launching them as the Family Gems. "[The way I met them was] strange ... I went up into the mountains with my houseboy to take an LSD trip. We met two girls hitch-hiking. One of them was pregnant. We gave them a lift, and a purse was left in the car. About a month later, near Malibu, I saw the pregnant girl again, only this time she'd had her baby. I was overjoyed for her and it was through her that I met all the girls. I told them about our involvement with the Maharishi and they told me they too had a guru, a guy named Charile who'd recently come out of jail after 12 years. His mother was a hooker, his father was a gangster, he'd drifted into crime but when I met him I found he had great musical ideas. We're writing together now. He's dumb, in some ways, but I accept his approach and have learnt from him."

IMPRINT "Some [of the author's pronouncements] are simply inaccurate. [Simon] Garfield analyzes the use of Cooper Black on the cover of Pet Sounds, the 1966 Beach Boys album, to explain one difference between legibility and readability: the impact of size. His point is correct, but his example is not. Although the title of Pet Sounds is set in Cooper Black, the song titles—his example of how Cooper Black is 'unreadable' at small sizes—are not. They are set in Clarendon."

EXPRESS "BEACH BOYS star BRIAN WILSON was given a standing ovation as he wrapped up his U.K. trek at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday (18Sep11). The pop legend returned to the famed London venue with a 14-strong band to play a selection of Gershwin arrangements, taken from his 2010 album Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin."

TELEGRAPH "Brian Wilson is the definition of a musician who should be heard and not seen. In his glory days, he created some of the most gorgeous, inventive and harmonically complex pop music ever heard, its colour and vibrancy in perfect sync with the golden sun-brushed youth of the Beach Boys. Whatever has assailed him, in terms of mental and physical health problems, his musical gifts remain intact enough for him to front a 15-piece band capable of recreating Wilson’s music in its full splendour."

EVENING STANDARD "Fragile legend Brian Wilson's blissful reworking of his Beach Boys masterpiece Pet Sounds, performed here almost a decade ago, was received with the near-religious fervour of a genuine second coming."

SUNDAY MERCURY "A friend of mine believes no moments in life are quite as perfect as the seconds before the needle hits a Brian Wilson record, that the knowledge something amazing is about to happen is as good as it gets. This occupied me as I waited in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on Wednesday night to watch Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin, a performance featuring sections from his new album and some of his best-loved Beach Boys masterpieces. Of course, Wilson is the master of sublime anticipation with best-loved hits including Wouldn’t It Be Nice, I Get Around and Surfer Girl brimming with the promise of unfettered youth and dreams tantalisingly within reach but as yet unfulfilled."