Discover Top Posts Tagged with #cabinessence

🌽 Over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield 🌽

#van dyke parks #the beach boys #cabinessence #60s #fanart

Why 'Smile' is The Beach Boys'- and Brian Wilson's magnum opus

The Beach Boys, for many decades have had something of an identity crisis- the band mainly seen in mainstream as the fun & sun loving surfer band, soon gained newfound acclaim for the landmark production of Pet Sounds and saw growing interest in the band's (and Brian Wilson's) extremely tumultuous and even tragic history simultaneously. Smile manages to touch upon all of this at once, as we see the stunning transformation from the small teenage-led garage band in Hawthorne becoming musical and cultural icons.

What was planned to be a album meant to top Pet Sounds & The Beatles' soon-to-be album Sgt. Pepper- Smile has seen one of the most consequential episodes in all of rock history, But beside the legends & the endless debates surrounding it...what about the album itself? (For numerous reasons I talk about here, the 19-track, three-movement version on The Smile Sessions is the version (I believe) people should go to to experience their first listen with if you want the Beach Boys version of it- and is what this review is based on).

Truth be told, I do think Smile actually ties Pet Sounds for their best work, because its existence makes it so hard for me to choose *just* one album considered to be their best. And even if you never knew the album's history, the original songs easily represent the absolute culmination of Brian Wilson's then-only 5-year long career as a songwriter, composer, producer, and innovator in the industry- and he was only 23 when he started Smile.

For all the growing concerns that the Boys weren't cool or heavy enough during the 60s, and even though the album leans more on the experimental- Smile is still unapologetically Beach Boys in its sound, staying on-brand and allowing us a comfortable way to listen to newer, even challenging musical ideas. Brian's radically experimental composition chops are shown in full, dizzying force- with Smile, Brian was creating editing and production techniques that were so new and novel at the time, it would rarely be attempted again until digital music editing was more common decades later. The music world was his playground, and he was ready to try anything.

Some people may lament certain tracks (like "Holidays") are majority instrumental (due to the album being unfinished)- especially in comparison to Brian's solo version, but this is nothing new: Most Beach Boys albums up to this point had instrumental tracks where Brian tried new compositions, and Pet Sounds & Smile was no exception. But where Pet Sounds evolved instrumentals into *compositions* to fit the album's flow- Smile takes it several steps further. It (unintentionally) sets a positive example that not every song in an album- nor the album itself, needs to be conventional in any way. It was a bold new world and experiment for rock music- why be dogmatic with established rules?

If "Good Vibrations" was a 'Pocket Symphony', then Smile is the symphony itself and these songs are Brian's compositions, and like with editing, tried everything and used various levels of instruments and non-instruments to create a raw, bold new sound- and with the other Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks and The Wrecking Crew musicians, it would slowly (and painfully) be realized.

The array and variety of sounds and moods in Smile's very compositions are stunning- it's seen in the dizzying Americana and Western sound of "Heroes & Villains", the gorgeous baroque tones of "Wonderful", the monstrous and hypnotic industrial noise of "Cabinessence", and the freakishly apocalyptic orchestral breakdown of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow"- easily the most unnerving, intense, and horrifying song in all of Beach Boys canon. And like any good Beach Boys album- the more you listen, the more things that were hidden show themselves to you in Smile.

But that didn't mean that the vocals were neglected- far from it, and some of the best vocal and harmony work ever from The Beach Boys exist in Smile- and the opening hymn "Our Prayer" starts the album out reminding us this. And they're all utilized to terrific extent, especially with the songs mentioned above- the whole album wouldn't be the same with it all *completely* gone.

That leads into why the album- even though it's unfinished, sounds so weirdly whole and complete, and that was the incredible musical ingenuity of Brian Wilson as a songwriter & producer and his creative ways of breaking through the future of music with passionate and stylish brute force, while tastefully and lovingly honoring the old that inspired his musical world- going over countless genres & emotions in the process... and having it all still sound like it fits together.

Smile represents the most delicate balance of extreme contrasts, but this balance is miraculously pulled off for each one- quiet and loud moments, humorous & emotional, conventional songs versus songs with no rules, new instrumentals & old classical ones, and a dying old world versus the birth of something new led by impassioned youth...sometimes all in the same song.

The youth and vulnerability of Brian, however, was also unintentionally the project's downfall- He had too many ideas, so many aspirations and grandiose statements to make- but also had too much mental trauma and issues, and like many of his contemporaries, he flew too close to the sun and burned up his talents and energy in the process with a fiery glow.

Smile's purpose as a spiritual statement of youth surrounds all of the album- but even back then, Brian knew it could never last, he was slowly getting older, and reality- like it does with most people, birthed a brutal wake up call to his ambitions & outlook for the world- that more just future where the young could transform society & the world for better never came, and Smile's collapse would be an eerie warning to what the world would look like. After that- politics of love would turn into politics of conflict, as racial hatred and war loomed over America, and the Summer of Love would be violently torn apart by reality.

But while Brian eventually took a serious mental blow and had to scrap the project- he went down fighting tooth and nail, still believing that the band, and rock music itself can ascend to something more- the song "Surf's Up" encapsulates this entirely, declaring an end to the band's surfer image, and embracing a new and freer musical world. And while it's filled with dazzling (and even confusing) wordplay, the most simple, and easily understood part came at the end of it- the clearest message from the album and Brian himself, and tellingly- added years after the project's collapse:

A children's song, Have you listened as they played?, Their song is love, And the children know the way...

The fact that Brian would be able to actually live to see his vision fulfilled and completed on is own terms despite so much extreme trauma he went through- and see newfound love for Smile by younger folks listening to it for the first time 40 years later *and* make their own versions out of musical passion, shows that with time, these dreams can become reality- and planting those seeds for that world you believe in for the next generation to be inspired by... is always worthwhile.

home away from home #cabinlife #cabinessence @philbrookmuseum @karlunnasch #tulsa #philbrook (at Philbrook Museum of Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2E1a8pD61E/?igshid=1nykg53lbosn1

#cabinlife #cabinessence #tulsa #philbrook

Head out to Philbrook Fri night for this awesome event. Arrive early to get a first look of our new live video coming soon! #cabinconcert #cabinessence #almostfamous #Repost @philbrookmuseum ・・・ “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.” (at Philbrook Museum of Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzGEh4WjBmZ/?igshid=i35jlir6856s

#cabinconcert #cabinessence #almostfamous #repost

#cabinlife with @mmmtorbs #cabinconcert @philbrookmuseum @karlunnasch #cabinessence . . . . #bandelier #music #bandeliermusic #folk #rock #folkrock #songwriter #americana #folkmusic #folkart #musica #folklorico #western #southwestern #southwest #heartland #tulsa #oklahoma #tulsaoklahoma #tulsamusic #oklahomamusic #texas #texasmusic #newmexico #newmexicomusic #rocknroll #prairie #song (at Philbrook Museum of Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwUWYcwnj0q/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=w8cg0q7v1jrh

Of course, checking the past can be painful, which is why I ask myself how all the different musicians who released the LPs, where they look back feel about these type of enterprises. Brian Wilson Presents Smile by, hm, Brian Wilson got him to confront the infamous album, which broke him. Many years later he decided to salvage this project by re-recording the entire record to reach the plan he had for that. This time he got surrounded by a more supportive personnel, which results into a fine addition to his opus, but we must know this is not Smile. The latter shall remain one of the great mysteries of rock music, but this version shows the reason for Mr. Wilson's stature. The tune in the link, for instance, still sounds unlike anything else.