Why fans rejecting Smiley Smile or Love You bothers me.

[Fall Breaks]

Much of "Love You" sounds like the musical equivalent of someone hit by a car learning how to walk all over again. That's the only way I can describe it.  

Yes, and watching someone learning to walk again can be a very touching experience.

[sockittome]

Not everything is brilliant on Love You.

Bingo!  I think that's why it doesn't do anything for me.  Brian set such a high standard with the earlier albums, that it's hard for me to see it dropped down several notches.  It's like watching a train slip off the rail, car by car, and then after the dust clears, thinking wow, that used to be one awesome train!

[Fall Breaks]

Not everything is brilliant on Love You.

Bingo!  I think that's why it doesn't do anything for me.  Brian set such a high standard with the earlier albums, that it's hard for me to see it dropped down several notches.  It's like watching a train slip off the rail, car by car, and then after the dust clears, thinking wow, that used to be one awesome train!

Gotta love the metaphors that Love You creates for you: car accidents, train crashes...  But I do get your points.

[Mr. Cohen]

...retread of Brian Wilson, but he seems to be taking a general artistic direction that further explores the "Americana" aspect of SMiLE in it's completed form, finding his inspiration from distinctly vintage American sources and creating a fresh lyrical and musical expression thereby.

I see that comparison, although Sufjan's musical direction is usually less trippy, more directly inspired by classical music (including 20th century classical music), and has folksy strains that remind me of Joni Mitchell. I can listen to it and say, "hey, that sounds just like Philip Glass", or "hey, that sounds just like Joni Mitchell". But, at the same time, his music is avant-garde at times and very much rooted in Americana. Still, I can't say "I've never heard anything like this before" like I can for some SMiLE music.

[drbeachboy]

Not everything is brilliant on Love You.

Bingo!  I think that's why it doesn't do anything for me.  Brian set such a high standard with the earlier albums, that it's hard for me to see it dropped down several notches.  It's like watching a train slip off the rail, car by car, and then after the dust clears, thinking wow, that used to be one awesome train!

Bingo? Other than Pet Sounds, which other albums are there that everything on it is brilliant? None really! So, by your reply, then no other Beach Boys albums do anything for you? You don't like Love You? That's fine. Brilliance isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm that way with Pet Sounds. I mean, I like it, but other than Wouldn't It Be Nice, I really need to be in a certain mood to enjoy and really appreciate it.

[buddhahat]

What I think Love You has going for it that many BB albums don't is unity. Apart Good Time, all the songs sound like they belong together, and they were written by the same guy (which they were). It's a very honest record - a brilliant snapshot of Brian c.1977. It has a bingey, coke fried, cheap thrills sort of feel to it that almost (unintentionally of course) amounts to a unifying concept. It's the sound of somebody desperately trying to blot out the pain with dumb, happy, simple stuff like roller skating rinks and johnny carson, nursery rhyme ditties about space. In this context, the lazy, simple production reinforces the concept imo.

Then you have the slower, more melancholy songs where that pain is revealed a bit more clearly - Lyrics aside, the songs from The Night Was So Young through to Airplane all have a real sadness to them, and I think they're amongst the most beautiful he ever wrote.

[sockittome]

Other than Pet Sounds, which other albums are there that everything on it is brilliant? None really!

You don't think the SMiLE material is brilliant?  Or Sunflower (and there was only a small amount of Brian on that one)?  Or what about all the pre-Party stuff?  No brilliance to be found?  If that's the way you see it, that's ok.  As I stated earlier, different strokes.  Everyone's gonna have different preferences.

I'm agreeing to disagree, as my wife always says! 

[the captain]

Yeah, that's right. It bothers me. To me, these are pure expressions from one man's soul, that being Brian Wilson in this case, and if you hate these albums, well, I feel like you are rejecting Brian Wilson as a person. Yes, I feel it is that blunt of a statement. Honestly, I feel that by doing that, you reduce Brian to a commercial entity that you use purely for your own enjoyment.

...

Like so many rock stars plead, it should all be more about the music, shouldn't it? And, in just discussing the music, shouldn't we have some regard to people's feelings? Think about the torment bad reviews cause some people. What would it hurt if there was a little more love and acceptance? It would hurt nothing but our own sense of entitlement, that we reserve the right to negatively judge people to boost our own self-esteem.

I think you've got some self-contradiction going on. If you want people's responses to be purely about the music, then it is irrelevant whether you reject Brian Wilson as a person or you critique that music harshly when the mood strikes you. If you, as listener, dislike the music and "it's purely about the music," then you have every right to reject that music as harshly as you want, even if it comes straight from the musician's soul or means you reject the musician himself. If it were more about affirming the musician's humanity, then what's the point of music--it would be something of a middle man getting in the way of our affirmations of one another as people. (The other assumption I think you're making that is quite a leap is that just because you think Smiley Smile and Love you are "pure expressions from [Brian's] soul," that they are those pure expressions. Anyway, I love Love You.

[Mr. Cohen]

Ah, you missed the post where I said that the topic post was, quite literally, a drunken screed of "Lutherian" proportions and that it didn't even make sense to me.

[the captain]

Ah, did not read the whole thread.

[drbeachboy]

@ sockittome

You said you did not like Love You, because you agreed with me saying "Not everything is brilliant...". Love You is an album. Smile is not. Yes, there is sheer brilliance on the Smile tracks.  There is brilliance on the Sunflower album, and there is brilliance on all of their studio albums. The difference though, is that not every track on any one album is brilliant, except maybe, Pet Sounds. I do think that every album has some brilliant tracks, but every track does not have to be brilliant to make for a good album. All of The Beach Boys best albums have a clunker of some kind. All Summer has Our Favorite Recording Sessions, Today has Bull Sessions etc. In my opinion Love You has Love Is A Woman and Ding Dang as so-so tracks. Like I said earlier, I have no problem with you not liking Love You. I was just questioning why an album has to be brilliant in order for you to like it. You are the one that answered "Bingo" to my post.

[Mr. Cohen]

Ok, I just wrote this in an e-mail to someone who used to post here and I felt that I needed to also post it here for the anti-Love You gentiles:

"love you truly is a cosmic album full of joy. as rock journalist lester bangs described it, it sounds "like the great roller rink in the sky". the cover of love you sums up the sound of the music better than any other album cover i have ever seen. the music sounds pixelated. pixelation, according to wikipedia, "is an effect caused by displaying a bitmap or a section of a bitmap at such a large size that individual pixels, small single-colored square display elements that comprise the bitmap, are visible to the eye." and here we see brian distilling his complex melodic ideas into their purest form, three or four note huge sounding synth parts that still manage to carry the same amount of emotion as they would in a more complex form. it is the same process. i have also likened it to a boy genius hopped up on ritalin playing with his lite-brite late into the night. what we the listener get is a dazzling colorful mosaic, hypnotic in its simplicity and esoteric beauty. brian had to colonize the frontier of mars to create this music for us. no man, earthbound for his entire life, could have created it.

it is in parts inspired by phil spector's legendary wall of sound and by wendy carlos switched on bach (bach music performed entirely on 60s era synthesizers), yet entirely brian and within the classic beach boys idiom. this is the sound of brian having fun. fans can like "fire" more, and while i appreciate that song, i would rather hear the sound of brian, that celestial being that he is, having fun as opposed to hearing him have a breakdown. i think the moment of epiphany came to me when i heard the boogie woogie/honky tonk outro to "airplane". i was stoned, and when that started, i realized that love you was the work of that same brian we had always known and loved.

it doesn't hurt that the album is full of great chord changes and lifting melodies or that the lyrics are the most unique lyrics you will ever hear on a rock album. love you... i love you!"

[buddhahat]

Ok, I just wrote this in an e-mail to someone who used to post here and I felt that I needed to also post it here for the anti-Love You gentiles:

"love you truly is a cosmic album full of joy. as rock journalist lester bangs described it, it sounds "like the great roller rink in the sky". the cover of love you sums up the sound of the music better than any other album cover i have ever seen. the music sounds pixelated. pixelation, according to wikipedia, "is an effect caused by displaying a bitmap or a section of a bitmap at such a large size that individual pixels, small single-colored square display elements that comprise the bitmap, are visible to the eye." and here we see brian distilling his complex melodic ideas into their purest form, three or four note huge sounding synth parts that still manage to carry the same amount of emotion as they would in a more complex form. it is the same process. i have also likened it to a boy genius hopped up on ritalin playing with his lite-brite late into the night. what we the listener get is a dazzling colorful mosaic, hypnotic in its simplicity and esoteric beauty. brian had to colonize the frontier of mars to create this music for us. no man, earthbound for his entire life, could have created it.

it is in parts inspired by phil spector's legendary wall of sound and by wendy carlos switched on bach (bach music performed entirely on 60s era synthesizers), yet entirely brian and within the classic beach boys idiom. this is the sound of brian having fun. fans can like "fire" more, and while i appreciate that song, i would rather hear the sound of brian, that celestial being that he is, having fun as opposed to hearing him have a breakdown. i think the moment of epiphany came to me when i heard the boogie woogie/honky tonk outro to "airplane". i was stoned, and when that started, i realized that love you was the work of that same brian we had always known and loved.

it doesn't hurt that the album is full of great chord changes and lifting melodies or that the lyrics are the most unique lyrics you will ever hear on a rock album. love you... i love you!"

Good stuff - enjoyed reading that, especially the pixellation analogy. I read the Lester Bangs review the other day and I think he nails it. I'd love to post it here but I think copyright laws probably prevent it. What I love about Love You is it has a hipness to it, and it's the hipness that always shined through when Brian was left to his own devices, free from constraints of making a commercial record. I think it has dated very well, ironically considering the period moog sounds - in fact if anything, those sounds make it seem more 'now'.